The Martian War (3 page)

The professor maintained a mock stern expression. “I should have been quite disappointed had you died, Wells. Though you are only eighteen, I see great potential in you. Please don’t crawl into a moist grave until you have accomplished something worthwhile.” The older man paced the room as if searching for significant words. “Ah, quite humbling, isn’t it? A superior creature such as yourself, highly evolved and possessed of a grand intellect—laid low by something as crude and insignificant as a germ.”

Wells gave a wan smile in response. “I’m sorry, sir. Henceforth, I shall try to prove my evolutionary superiority.”

Huxley paused at the room’s warped door, ready to leave. “You may wish to know, Wells, that this will be my last semester teaching at the university.”

In his alarm, Wells managed to struggle his way into a
half-sitting position. “But, sir, there’s so much more we can learn from you!”

“Ah, I have wasted far too much time and energy in debates over Darwinism. I’ve explored the world, furthered the cause of science, and taught countless students, many of whom will use their knowledge for nothing more interesting than to add to lively chat at the pub. I have earned myself a quiet retirement.”

“You have made an impact on many of us, sir,” Wells said, swallowing back the lump that was rising in his throat. “Indeed, you are the greatest man I should ever hope to meet.”

“Then you must continue to meet other men in the hope of proving yourself wrong.” The professor’s dark eyes twinkled. He tugged open the door, adjusted his hat, and frowned back at his sick student. “With your imagination, Wells, I expect you to make something of yourself. Don’t disappoint me.”

After Huxley left, Wells collapsed back on his bed. Jennings stared at him in awe. Neither man could believe what he had just heard. “That was quite a benediction, Herbert.”

Wells closed his blue eyes, dizzy with residual weakness from the fever, but his mind was already spinning with a thousand thoughts, ideas, ambitions, and challenges for himself. “I’ll rest for a bit, Jennings. I have to regain my health before I can begin my life’s work.”

1893

I
n the sweltering Sahara, Percival Lowell stood at the open flap of his tent. Though the constant dust and unrelenting heat were bothersome, he reveled in his vast construction site, glad to be far from Boston and civilized industry.

The excavations extended beyond the vanishing point of the flat horizon. Thousands of sweating laborers—mostly illiterate Tuaregs and sullen French prisoners exiled here to Algeria— moved like choreographed machinery as they dug monumental trenches according to Lowell’s commands, scribing deep lines in the sand. It was like a tattoo on the Earth’s skin, a huge design that went nowhere and served no purpose, as far as most people could see. But Lowell had never made his decisions
based upon the opinions of “sensible people.”

As a boy on his rooftop in Boston, and later under the clear skies of Japan, Lowell had used his best telescopes to see similar marks on ruddy Mars. Long canals extending thousands of miles across the red desert. Straight lines, networks, intersections, all obviously of artificial origin. His observations and his imagination had convinced him that such markings must be indicative of life, an intelligent civilization. What
were
the canals? Why had they been constructed across the vast waterless continents? Were the Martians perhaps building great works—irrigation systems and pumping stations—to enable their race to survive on a dying world?

Lowell wanted to send them a message that intelligent life had sprung from the womb of the Earth as well, that the Martians were not alone in the universe.

Other astronomers claimed not to see the canals at all. It reminded Lowell of the trial of Galileo, when high church officials and Pope Paul V had refused to admit seeing the moons of Jupiter through the astronomer’s “optick glass,” denying the evidence of their own eyes. Lowell couldn’t decide if his contemporaries were similarly bullheaded, or just plain blind. But he would show them, provided the work could be completed according to the rigid schedule he had imposed.

When he took a deep breath, the fiery heat and dust and petroleum stench curled the hairs in his moustache. He fished inside the pocket of his cream jacket and withdrew his special pair of pince-nez with lenses made of red-stained glass. Through the oxide tint, he could look out at the blistering Sahara, imagining instead the scarlet sands of Mars.
Mars.
Dr. Moreau, his new colleague in this undertaking, had given him the
spectacles. They were a very effective tool, especially out here.

In such a great desert, how could one not intuitively understand? Water covered sixty percent of the Earth’s surface, while Mars was a vast planetary wasteland. The Martians must have found it necessary to construct the magnificent canals as their parched world withered with age. By now, those once-glorious minds must be desperate, ready to grasp at any hope … .

Lowell strolled from the encampment to the long ditch his army of workers had cut through the shifting sands. From atop a crate, barrel-chested Moreau bellowed at the laborers. “Dig! Dig, you bastards! It’s only sand.”

If Lowell’s calculations were correct, they had little time. The Martian emissary would be on its way, but lost, forging toward the wilderness of Earth. In the whole civilization of humanity, Lowell believed only he maintained an open mind. Only he was a legitimate and acceptable emissary for dignitaries from another planet in the solar system. Unless he sent his signal, the Martian would not know where to go. The alien emissary would become lost in a bureaucratic tangle of skeptics and Luddites.

If the approaching Martian craft saw Lowell’s signal, then it could alter its course, go to a welcoming ear, someone who could become a champion for two planets. Lowell had exorbitant plans, but he did not believe he had delusions of grandeur. He wanted to do this for the betterment of humanity, not for his own glory, but because it was the right thing to do.

Lowell would bring the Martian emissary to the halls of Earthly government. He would accept his kudos, nod to his rich father and see if the old man might be proud. Then he would change the course of history.

But only if he could transmit his message in time.

Lowell prayed his workers would do their jobs swiftly enough, or his signal to the Martians would be in vain.

* * *

Months earlier, freshly returned from his sojourn in mysterious Japan, Lowell had spent a frustrating night at the Harvard Observatory. The skies were not far enough from the smoke of men, thus the seeing had been murky. But it was the best telescope currently available to him.

Lowell paid for his private observing time here with large donations from his family fortune, but he had already decided that he must fund a new observatory in a location chosen for its seeing, weather, and altitude—not for the convenience of Harvard astronomers. Most important, his new observatory must be completed in time to study the upcoming 1894 opposition of Mars.

A young Harvard assistant, Andrew Ellicott Douglass, stood inside the echoing dome, waiting for Lowell to relinquish the eyepiece. The wooden-plank walls exuded a resinous scent. From where he sat, pork pie hat turned backward on his head and sketchpad in his lap, Lowell could sense the young man’s impatience. But he did not remove his eye from the wavering ruddy disk, where fine lines appeared and disappeared.

“Mister Lowell, sir, I understand your eagerness to use the refractor, but I have the proper qualifications—”

Lowell looked down from his seat on the padded ladder. “Qualifications, Mr. Douglass? I have exceptionally keen eyesight—and an exceptionally large fortune. Therefore I am
also fully qualified.” Tact was a commodity that served little purpose as far as Lowell was concerned, but now he made a half-hearted attempt. “You are welcome to devote any other night to the study of the heavens, but this is
Mars
and it is near opposition. Please indulge an unworthy amateur.”

Within moments Lowell had become totally engrossed in the view again. With his hands guided by the image in the eyepiece, Lowell deftly sketched Mars, copying the lines he saw. He had never been an armchair astronomer and would go blind before he allowed himself to be considered one. He had already recorded over a hundred of the canals he saw on Mars.

After midnight, his eyes burning, he flipped to a fresh page in his sketchpad where earlier in the day he had already scribed a circle as the outline for another drawing of the red planet. At some time in the past hour, Douglass had left. Lowell hoped the young man was at least doing work at one of the other telescopes, since this evening’s seeing was so extraordinary. He oriented his pencil on the map pad, then looked through the eyepiece again.

A brilliant green flash leaped from the surface of Mars, a jet of vivid emerald fire as of a great explosion, or some kind of cannon shot. A huge mass of luminous gas trailed a green mist behind it.

Once previously, Lowell had seen the glint of sunlight on the Martian ice caps, which had fooled him into seeing a dazzling message, but it had not been like this. Not so green, so violent, so prominent.

He noted the exact time on the pad in his lap, and his excitement grew as he formulated an explanation. The phenomenon was obviously a stupendous
launch
, a ship
exploding away from the gravity of Mars into space!

Where else would they go, but to Earth? The Martians were coming!

* * *

Naturally, no one believed him … but Lowell didn’t care.

Laying plans for a great project to signal the Martians, he calculated the largest possible excavation, then set off immediately to Europe on his way to French Algeria, and thence down into the deepest Sahara … .

In order to generate support and receive the blessing of a man he revered, Lowell traveled by way of Milan, Italy. Though he was not easily intimidated, he found himself stuttering in awe when he met the great Giovanni Schiaparelli, original cartographer of the canals of Mars and director of the Milan Observatory since 1862. Using only an eight-inch telescope, he had discovered the asteroid Hesperia and created original maps of the Martian
canali
in 1877, only a year after Lowell graduated with honors from Harvard.

“When I made my drawings,” the old astronomer said, struggling with his English, “I was meant for those lines to represent only channels or cracks in surface. I, myself, never thought of
canali
as more than blemishes. I am told that the word
canali
suggest a different thing to non-Italian ears, maybe man-made canals—”

“Not made by men,” Lowell interrupted, “but by intelligent beings. Geometrical precision on a planetary scale? What else can it be but the mark of an intelligent race?”

The old astronomer poured from a bottle of Chianti on a side
table. He took a sip and blinked his rheumy eyes. His rooms were filled with books, oil lamps, and melted lumps of candles in terra cotta dishes. A pair of spectacles lay on an open tome, while an enormous magnifying glass rested within easy reach. Lowell felt a rare flash of sympathy—losing one’s eyesight must be the worst hell a dedicated astronomer could imagine.

“I wish you could see what I have discerned, Signore Schiaparelli. Think of a dying world inhabited by a once-marvelous civilization. The very existence of a planetwide system of canals implies a world order that knows no national boundaries, a society that long ago forgot its political disputes and racial animosity, uniting the populace in a quest for water. The dark spots are pumping stations, obviously. Or oases.”

Schiaparelli took a quick swallow of his Chianti, only to begin a brief coughing fit. Outside on the open balcony, pigeons fluttered in the sunlight. “But if Mars is so arid, Signore Lowell, surely all water must evaporate from the open
canali
… if the temperature is above freezing, of course—and it
must
be in order for the water to stay in its liquid state.”

Lowell paced the room. “What if the lines we see are aqueducts, with lush vegetation thriving in irrigated soil, much as the Egyptians grow their crops in the Nile flood plains? I estimate the darkened aqueduct fringes to be about thirty miles wide. Vegetation would not only emphasize the lines of the canals, but would also shield the open water from rapid evaporation. Simple, you see?”

The old astronomer seemed more amused than captivated by the concepts. Lowell came closer to his host, barely controlling his enthusiasm. “My proposed plan in the Sahara follows a similar principle, Signore, but on a much smaller scale, since I
am only one man and, alas, our own Earthly civilization has no stomach for such dreams. But someone must send a signal to our star-crossed brothers.”

“And how will you accomplish this?”

“I have already dispatched surveyors and work teams to southern Algeria. I will excavate three canals, each one ten miles long, across an otherwise featureless basin, to form a perfect equilateral triangle. A geometrical symbol impossible to explain by random natural processes. Therefore, it will be a clear message that intelligent life inhabits this world. I will emphasize my puny canals with lines of fire, filling the trenches with petroleum products and igniting them under the cloudless desert skies. It will be a brief but dramatic message, blazing into the night. But I am confident the Martians will see it.”

His eyes sparkled, his voice rose in volume. Based on his own celestial calculations, Lowell had estimated how much travel time the Martians would require to reach Earth. He lowered his voice. “I believe the Martians have already launched an ambassador to us.”

Schiaparelli appeared surprised at such a bold assertion, but Lowell spoke with absolute confidence. “We must show them where to land. The Martian representative will receive an open-hearted welcome from us. Signore Schiaparelli,
I
intend to lead that party. I will be the first man to shake hands with a Martian.”