Christopher Priest: The Space Machine

He was by the battle-machine for several minutes, but at last he returned to us. He seemed to have recovered from his moment of emotion, and walked briskly and directly towards us.

“There is something I have never, said to you before,” he said, addressing us both. “I believe you saved my life, the day you found me by the river with the curate. I have never thanked you enough.”

I said: “You built the Space Machine, Mr Wells. Nothing that we have accomplished would have been possible without that.”

He dismissed this remark with a wave of his hand.

“Miss Fitzgibbon,” he said. “Will you excuse me if I leave on my own?”

“You are not going, Mr Wells?”

“I have much to do. We will meet again, never fear. I shall call on you at Richmond at the earliest opportunity.”

“But sir,” I said. “Where are you going?”

“I think I must find my way to Leatherhead, Mr Turnbull. I was on a journey to find my wife when you met me, and now I must complete that journey. Whether she is dead or alive is something that is only my concern.”

“But we could take you to Leatherhead in the Space Machine,” said Amelia.

“There will be no need for that. I can find my way.”

He extended his hand to me, and I took it uncertainly. Mr Wells’s grip was firm, but I did not understand why he should leave us so unexpectedly. When he released my hand he turned to Amelia, and she embraced him warmly.

He nodded to me, then turned away and walked down the side of the Hill.

Somewhere behind us there came a sudden sound: it was a high-pitched shrieking, not at all unlike the Martians’ sirens. I jumped in alarm, and looked all about me… but there was no movement from any of the Martian devices. Amelia, standing beside me, had also reacted to the sound, but her attention was taken up with Mr Wells’s actions.

The gentleman in question had gone no more than a few yards, and, disregarding the shriek, was looking through the notebook. I saw him take two or three of the pages, then rip them out. He screwed them up in his hand, and tossed them amongst the debris of the Martians’ presence. He glanced back at us, and saw we were both watching him.

After a moment he climbed back to where we stood.

“There’s just one other thing, Turnbull,” he said. “I have treated the account of your adventures on Mars with great seriousness, improbable as your story sometimes seemed.”

“But Mr Wells—”

He raised his hand to silence me. “It would not be right to dismiss your account as total fabrication, but you would be hard put to substantiate what you told me.”

I was astounded to hear my friend say such things! His implication was no less than that Amelia and I were not telling the truth! I stepped forward angrily… but then I felt a gentle touch on my arm.

I looked at Amelia, and saw that she was smiling. “Edward, there is no need for this,” she said.

I saw that Mr Wells was smiling too, and that there was something of a gleam in his eye.

“We all have our tales to tell, Mr Turnbull,” he said. “Good day to you.”

With that, he turned away and strode determinedly down the Hill, replacing the notebook in his breast-pocket.

“Mr Wells is behaving very strangely,” I said. “He has come with us to this cataclysm, when suddenly he abandons us just when we most need him. Now he is casting doubt on—”

I was interrupted by a repetition of the shrieking sound we had heard a minute or so earlier. It was much closer now, and both Amelia and I realized simultaneously what it was.

We turned and stared down the Hill, towards the north eastern side, where the railway-line runs towards Euston. A moment later we saw the train moving slowly over the rusting lines, throwing up huge white clouds of steam. The driver blew the whistle for the third time, and the shriek reverberated around the whole city below. As if in answer there came a second sound. A bell began to toll in a church by St John’s Wood. Startled, the crows left their macabre pickings and flapped noisily into the sky. Amelia and I leapt up and down at the crest of Primrose Hill, waving our kerchiefs to the passengers. As the train moved slowly out of sight, I took Amelia into my arms. I kissed her passionately, and, with a joyous sense of reawakening hope, we sat down on the bedstead to wait for the first people to arrive.