Stephen Baxter - The Massacre of Mankind

According to Rayleigh, Lilienthal and others, the Martians’ flying-machines, in the First War, appeared to have been a design adapted to Mars’ air, so much thinner than ours, and of different composition. In thin air one would not use wings to rest on the air to support the craft, as our heavier-than-air aircraft designs have since the Wright brothers’ experiments. Rather, you would shape your craft to push the air out of the way, streamlining the ship like a stingray, a form to which the Martian machines have been compared.

It had taken days in the First War before that flyingmachine had been spied. Everyone supposed that the Essex machine must have been constructed from components carried in several cylinders, brought together and assembled. But now I was seeing this new machine only hours after the Middlesex cylinders had landed. In addition there had always seemed an uncertain, experimental aspect to the flying-machines as observed during the First War; this beast seemed much more confident. I realised with unease that Walter was right, that the Martians must have learned a great deal from their first dealings with humans, and had come back far better prepared, for our thicker air and other terrestrial conditions.

The machine came out of the west, following the line of the river – and thus heading for my position. I remembered that the Essex machine had been scattering the Black Smoke across the land, but there was no evidence of that dark agent this time. The machine passed directly over me; I ducked, but kept looking up. I saw that the hull was brazen, like the cowl of a fighting-machine, and its undersurface was grooved, perhaps for stability in the air, and its sharp rim was oddly feathered at the back. I imagined a battery of cameras trained on the machine as it passed over the city.

And I saw that the flying-machine had escorts: biplanes, two of them, which swooped and darted like flies beneath the belly of the behemoth: human planes, challenging the Martian. I thought they must be Albatros, or another German design – or even Russian – rather than anything British. I wondered what harm even the Red Baron, hero of the Russian front, could do to the Martian machine, if he ever got close enough. Yet it was cheering to me to see that the invaders did not have the skies entirely to themselves.

I watched the Martian and his escort pass on down the Thames, until I lost him in the glare of the rising sun. And then I heard the cries of the newsboys, for the day’s first specials were out.

I hurried from the Embankment and back into the city. Though the sun was barely up the crowds were out, and I had to battle to get hold of a flimsy Daily Mirror , exorbitantly priced at a shilling:

And even as the newsboys made fresh fortunes, the government was stirring, the bill-posters slapping fresh proclamations onto the lampposts, the loudhailer vans cruising the blockaded streets to issue fresh orders to the populace:

This new directive was set out over a portrait of the King, who looked a bit bewildered in an elaborate military uniform, but a better choice to stir the soul than a picture of Marvin, I knew by now.

I saw that ‘all able-bodied men between sixteen and sixty, not already engaged in vital war work’ were ‘encouraged’ to grab a pick and a shovel (bring your own; equipment not supplied) and to make their way to the ‘King’s Line’, which was to be a defensive perimeter cutting across the country between the Martians and the city. A map was appended, showing the Martian Cordon where it swept closest to the city to the northwest, near Uxbridge. Our Line would be a bow-shape five to ten miles back, I saw, and following the lines of the trunk roads – though advanced a little ahead of those highways, perhaps for ease of communication. Thus the Line would run from Ashford, north-east up through Twickenham and Richmond, then roughly north through Brentford, Ealing and Wembley to Hendon, and then north-west to Edgware – its terminus coming alarmingly close to Stanmore, where my sister-in-law might have returned, I noted. Tractors and digging machines both civilian and military were already drawing up to the Line, I read, which was being surveyed by the Royal Engineers and marked out by scouts; there would be a complex of trenches, earthworks, pillboxes and redoubts, manned by troops hastily deployed from Aldershot, and with artillery batteries reinforced by Navy guns. Then the British forces would be joined, in a gesture of friendship, by German detachments already being rushed across the Channel from occupied France.

A woman close to me, middle-aged, well-dressed, sternlooking, read the poster through a pince-nez. ‘My husband fought the Boers, you know.’

‘Did he?’

‘Died out there, in fact. They resisted like this, with entrenchments and tangled-up barbed wire so you couldn’t advance. I suppose we are now against the Martians as the Boers were against the British, rebels against a superior army.’

‘The Boers put up a good fight even so.’

‘That they did. But this defence line—’ She snorted. ‘“Ablebodied men”, indeed.’

I smiled. ‘No women, you mean?’

‘They’d rather use a German than a British woman.’ She glanced at me, taking in my trouser suit, short hair and pack, not with any trace of disapproval. ‘And do you think this line of theirs will work?’

‘Do you?’

‘If the Martians kindly give us a chance to build it.’ She flicked the poster with a fingernail, and walked away.

It was a morning of maps. On an inside page of my Mirror I found an extensive report on ‘The Flight From London’ during the Monday. The great trunk routes out of London to the south and east had been packed by civilians, making for Southampton and the West Country beyond, or for Portsmouth, Brighton, Hastings, Dover – even for Essex as Frank, Alice and I had once fled – all hoping for refuge from the Martians, and perhaps a boat out of England. The police and military contented themselves with setting aside lanes along the highways so that the walkers did not at least impede the flow of personnel and material into and out of the capital. And the Red Cross, with government approval, was hastily setting up reception camps at places like Canterbury, Lewes and Horsham. At least this time there was some order to it – so far, anyhow.

As for myself, my own instinct was still to remain in central London. To be in the thick of it: Julie Elphinstone, War Correspondent! It had a ring to it. But I had my personal duty as well. I thought of Alice, helpless if she had returned to Stanmore – and just beyond the limit of the King’s Line, where you might expect the fighting to be worse if the Martians thought as the Germans would have, and tried to turn the British flank. Perhaps I should go to her. As I stood there undecided, another flock of newsboys came out, another set of specials, with the ink not yet dry on the first. This time there was news brought back from spotter planes who had been bravely flying over the Middlesex salient.

The fighting-machines were already on the move, already pushing out of their huge Cordon.

In the early hours of Tuesday, after the Martians’ lightning-fast scattering of the Army’s resistance, Frank and Verity and a handful of their staff, and a number of troopers detached from their units, had huddled in hastily improvised foxholes and trenches. And they watched through the rest of that night as the fighting-machines stalked across the broken landscape within their Cordon, probing at the wreckage of our military emplacements. The night was dark, but Frank was able to follow their movements from the light of the burning of vehicles and dumps of fuel and ammunition. He would see their legs, long, graceful, articulated, passing before a crimson glare. Once or twice a searchlight was opened up, pinning the Martians in brilliance, but the source once revealed was incinerated in an instant. Frank heard little gun fire, saw little evidence of any resistance, confused or otherwise.