Christopher Priest - The Space Machine

Looking around at the dirty chaos of the laboratory I saw that although it was well littered with many electrical components and rods and bars of metals—as well as pieces of the crystalline substance scattered almost everywhere—it would take a diligent search to establish if we had enough to construct an entire Machine.

Mr Wells had carried some of the plans to the daylight, and was examining them minutely.

“I shall need several hours,” he said. “Some of this is familiar, but I cannot say for certain.

I did not wish to infect him with my faintheartedness, so in the spirit of seeming to be of help—yet ensuring I was out of the way—I offered to search the grounds for more useful components. Amelia merely nodded, for she was already busily searching the drawer of one of the benches, and Mr Wells was absorbed with the plans, so I left the laboratory and went out of the house.

I walked first to the ridge.

It was a fine summer’s day, and the sun shone brightly over the, ravaged countryside Most of the fires had burnt themselves out during the night, but the inky depths of the black vapours which covered Twickenham, Hounslow and Richmond were still impenetrable. The dome-shapes had flattened considerably, and long tendrils of the black stuff were spreading through the streets which had at first escaped being smothered.

Of the Martian invaders themselves there was no sign. Only to the south-west, in Bushy Park, did I see, clouds of green smoke rising, and I guessed that it was there the fourth projectile had landed.

I turned away from the scene, and walked past the house to the other side, where the grounds opened out on to Richmond Park. Here the view was uninterrupted across to Wimbledon, and but for the total. absence of any people, the Park was exactly as it had been on that first day I called at Reynolds House.

When I returned to the house I immediately discovered a problem of pressing urgency, although it was not one which in any way threatened our safety. Beside the outhouse, where the gunners’ horses had been tethered, I came across the corpses of the four animals that had been killed when the Martian attacked. During the summer night the flesh had started to decompose, and the raw wounds were crawling with flies and an unhealthy stench filled the air.

I could not possibly move the carcasses, and burning them was out of the question, so the only alternative was to bury them. Fortunately, the soldiers’ trenches had been dug very recently, and there was much fresh, upturned soil about.

I found a shovel and wheelbarrow, and began the unpleasant and lengthy chore of covering the rotting bodies. In two hours I had completed the task, and the horses were safely buried. The work was not without its unexpected benefit, though, for during it I discovered that in their haste the soldiers had left behind them several pieces of equipment in the trenches. One of these was a rifle and many rounds of ammunition… but more promisingly, I discovered two wooden crates, inside each of which were twenty-five hand-grenades.

With great care I carried these to the house, and stored them safely in the woodshed. I then returned to the laboratory to see how the other two were faring.

The fifth projectile fell in Barnes that night, about three miles to the north-east of the house. On the night following, the sixth projectile fell on Wimbledon Common.

Every day, at frequent intervals, we would walk out to the ridge and search for sign of the Martians. During the evening of the day we started work on the new Machine, we saw five of the glittering tripods marching together, heading towards London. Their heat-cannons were sheathed, and they strode with the confidence of the victor who has nothing to fear. These five must have been the occupants of the Bushy Park projectile, who were going up to join the others which even now, we assumed, were rampaging through London.

There were marked changes taking place in the Thames Valley, and they were not ones we cared for. The clouds of black vapour were swept away by the Martians: for one whole. day two battle-machines worked at clearing the muck, using an immense tube which sent forth a fierce jet of steam. This soon swept away the vapour, leaving a black, muddy liquid which flowed into the river. But the river itself was slowly changing.

The Martians had brought with them seeds of the ubiquitous red weed, and were deliberately sowing them along the banks. One day we saw a dozen or so of the legged ground vehicles, scurrying along the riverside walks and throwing up clouds of tiny seeds. In no time at all the alien vegetables were growing and spreading. Compared with the Spartan conditions under which it survived on Mars, the weed must have found the rich soil and moist atmosphere of England like a well fertilized hothouse. Within a week of our return to Reynolds’ House, the whole length of the river visible to us was choked with the lurid weed, and soon it was spreading to the waterside meadows. On sunny mornings, the creaking of its prodigious growth was so loud that, high and set back from the river as the house was, we could hear the sinister noise when we were inside with the doors and windows closed. It was a constant background to our secret work, and while we could hear it we were always upset by it. The weed was even taking hold on the dry, wooded slopes below the house, and as it encroached the trees turned brown, although it was still the height of summer.

How long would it be before the captive humans were set to cutting back the weed?

On the day after the tenth projectile landed—this, like the three that had directly preceded it, had fallen somewhere in central London—Mr Wells summoned me to the laboratory and announced that he had at last made a substantial advance.

Order had been restored in the laboratory. It had been thoroughly cleaned and tidied, and Amelia had draped huge velvet curtains over all the window-panes, so that work could continue after nightfall. Mr Wells had been in the laboratory from the moment he had left his bed, and the air was pleasantly smoked from his pipe.

“It was the circuitry of the crystals that was baffling me,” he said, stretching back comfortably in one of the chairs he had brought from the smoking-room. “You see, there is something about their chemical constituency that provides a direct current of electricity. The problem has been not to produce this effect, but to harness it to produce the attenuation field. Let me show you what I mean.”

He and Amelia had constructed a tiny apparatus on the bench. It consisted of a small wheel resting on a metal strip. Two tiny pieces of the crystalline substance had been attached to either side of the wheel. Mr Wells had connected various pieces of wire to the crystals, and the bare ends of these were resting on the surface of the bench.

“If I now connect together those wires I have here, you will see what happens.” Mr Wells took more pieces of wire and laid them across the various bare ends. As the last contact was made we all saw clearly that the little wheel had started to rotate slowly. “You see, with this circuit the crystals provide a motive force.”

“Just like the bicycles!” I said.

Mr Wells did not know what I was talking about, but Amelia nodded vigorously.

“That’s right,” she said. “But there are more crystals used on the bicycles, for there is a greater weight to pull.”

Mr Wells disconnected the apparatus, because as the wheel turned it was tangling the wires which were connected to it.

“Now, however,” he said, “if I complete the circuit in a different way ,” He bent closely over his work, peering first at the plans; then at the apparatus. “Watch this carefully, for I suspect we will see something dramatic.”