Christopher Priest - The Space Machine

I had intended to throw myself across Amelia, so protecting her with my own body, but in my haste I succeeded only in throwing us both to the ground. The explosion that followed therefore afflicted us both to an equal degree. There was one mighty blast, which hurled us bodily across the garden, and this was followed by a series of smaller explosions of varying severity. We tumbled helplessly through the long grass, and when at last we stopped there was a rain of burning timber and broken masonry, crashing to the soil about us.

In the interval that followed I heard the braying of the Martian as it turned away from us, its hatred satisfied.

Then, although we heard further concussions in the near distance, it was as if a stillness had fallen. There was a moment when I could hear an animal squealing in pain, but a revolver fired and even that stopped.

Amelia lay in the grass about ten feet from me, and as soon as I had recovered my senses I crawled hastily towards her. There was a sudden pain in my back, and at once I realized my combinations were on fire. I rolled over, and although the burning pain increased momentarily, I succeeded in extinguishing the smouldering fabric. I hurried over to Amelia, and saw that her clothes too had been ignited. I beat out the tiny flames with my hands, and at once I heard her moan.

“Is that you, Edward…?” she said indistinctly.

“Are you hurt?”

She shook her head, and as I tried to turn her over she climbed painfully to her feet of her own accord. She stood before me, looking very groggy.

“By Jove! That was close!”

It was Mr Wells. He came towards us from the bushes at the side of the lawn, apparently unharmed but, like us, shocked at the ferocity of the attack.

“Miss Fitzgibbon, are you injured?” he said solicitously.

“I think not.” She shook her head sharply. “I have become a little deaf.”

“That is the blast,” I said, for my own ears were buzzing. Just then we heard shouting beside the house, and we all turned in that direction.

A group of soldiers had appeared, all looking rather dazed. An officer was trying to organize them, and after a few moments of confusion they stepped forward to the blazing house and attempted to beat out the flames with sacking.

“We had better help them;’ I said to Mr Wells, and at once we set off across the lawn.

As we came around the corner of the building we met a scene of great destruction. Here the Army had mounted one of its artillery-pieces, and it was clearly at this that the Martian had fired. Its aim had been deadly accurate, for there remained just twisted and melted metal scattered about a large crater. There was almost nothing recognizable of the gun, bar one of its huge spoked wheels, which now lay about fifty yards to one side.

Further back, several horses had been tethered by one of the outhouses in the garden, and we were distressed to see that some of these had been killed; the remainder had been efficiently quieted by their handlers, who had placed blinds over their heads.

We went directly to the subaltern in charge.

“May we offer our help?” Mr Wells said.

“Is this your house, sir?”

Amelia answered. “No, I live here.”

“But the house is empty.”

“We have been abroad.” She glanced at the soldiers beating ineffectually at the flames. “There is a garden hose in that shed.”

At once the officer ordered two of the men to find the hose, and in a few moments it had been brought out and connected to a standing tap against the side of the house. Fortunately, the pressure was high and a jet of water issued at once.

We stood well back, seeing that the men had evidently been trained well, and that the fire fighting was conducted intelligently and efficiently. The jet of water was played on the more ferocious concentrations of fire, while the other men continued to beat with the sacking.

The officer supervised the effort with a minimum of orders, and when he stepped back as the flames were brought under control, I went over to him.

“Have you lost any men?” I said.

“Fortunately, sir, no. We had been ordered to move back just before the attack, and so were able to take cover in time.” He indicated several deep trenches dug across the lawn; they crossed the place where (so long ago!) I had sipped iced lemonade with Amelia. “If we’d been manning the piece…”

I nodded. “Were you billeted here?”

“Yes, sir. We’ve caused no damage, I think you’ll find. Just as soon as we’ve retrieved our equipment, we will have to withdraw.”

I understood that saving the house itself was not their main concern. It was lucky indeed that they needed to save their own possessions, otherwise we should have had great difficulty dousing the fire on our own.

Within a quarter of an hour the flames were out; it was the servants’ wing which had been hit, and two of the rooms on the ground floor were uninhabitable, and the six gunners who had been billeted there lost all their equipment. On the floor above, the major damage was caused by smoke and the explosion.

Of the rest of the house, the rooms on the side furthest from the exploding gun were least damaged: Sir William’s former smoking-room, for instance, had not even one broken window. Throughout the rest of the house there was a varying amount of damage, mostly breakages caused by the explosion, and every pane of glass in the walls of the laboratory had been shattered. In the grounds there was a certain amount of grass and shrubbery on fire, but the gunners soon dealt with this.

Once the fire had been put out, the artillery men took what they had retrieved of their equipment, loaded up an ammunition truck, and prepared to withdraw. Through all this we could hear the sounds of the battle continuing in the distance, and the subaltern told us he was anxious to join his unit in Richmond. He apologized for the damage caused when his gun had been destroyed, and we thanked him for his help in extinguishing the fire… then the troop of men rode away, down the Hill towards the town.

Mr Wells said that he was going to see where the Martians now were, and stepped out across the lawn towards the edge of the ridge. I followed Amelia into the house, and when we were inside I took her in my arms and held her tightly, her face nestling against the side of mine.

For several minutes we said nothing, but then at last she held back a little, and we looked lovingly into each other’s eyes. That momentary vision of our past selves had been a salutary shock; Amelia, with her face bruised and scarred, and her chemise torn and scorched, bore almost no resemblance to the rather prim and elegantly clad young woman I had glimpsed on the Time Machine. And I knew, by the way in which she was looking at me, that a similar transformation had come over my appearance.

She said: “When we were on the Time Machine you saw the Martian. You knew all along.”

“I only saw you,” I said. “I thought I saw you dying.”

“Is that why you took the Machine?”

“I don’t know. I was desperate… I loved you even then…”

She held me again, and her lips pressed briefly against my neck.

I heard her say, in words So soft they were almost inaudible:

“I understand now, Edward.”

Mr Wells brought the sombre news that he had counted six of the monstrous tripods in the valley below, and that the fighting continued.

“They are all over the place,” he said, “and as far as I could see there’s almost no resistance from our men. There are three machines within a mile of this house, but they are staying in the valley. I think, we shall be safe if we lie low here for a while.”