1 The Eve of the War No one would have believed that in the last years of the nineteenth century Earth was being watched closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own As people busied themselves with their own lives they were studied like someone looking through a microscope at the creatures that swarm in a drop of water Without a worry people went to and fro over Earth sure of their rule The planet Mars revolves around the sun at a distance of 140 million miles No one imagined that intelligent life might be on the planet People did not understand that Mars is older than Earth and that the changes on the planet have caused a problem for those 5
who live there It made them smarter more powerful and hard-hearted As they looked across space they saw our planet They saw hope for themselves in this green world Their only hope to survive was to make war and escape their own death The Martians seemed to have planned their arrival with amazing detail They carried out their plans in unity Although scientifi c men watched the red planet of Mars they did not understand the changes on the planet as the Martians got ready In 1894 a great light was seen that lit up the planet It was seen by many scientists I think that this blaze may have been the fi ring of a huge gun Around midnight on the twelfth of August a fast-moving mass of fl aming gas moved toward Earth The next day nothing of this was mentioned in the papers I would not have heard of the eruption on Mars if I had not met Ogilvy the well-known 6
astronomer He invited me to watch the red planet with him that night I watched Mars through the telescope What I could not see at that distance was the Thing that they were sending to us drawing nearer every minute It was the Thing that would bring so much struggle disaster and death to Earth That night again at midnight I saw another red fl ash of light and gas coming from the planet Another invisible missile started on its way to Earth from Mars Ogilvy laughed at the idea of Mars having people He believed it was meteor showers or a huge volcano exploding The chances of anything manlike on Mars are a million to one he said For ten nights hundreds of scientists saw the fl ame After the tenth night the shots ceased Even the newspapers began to write about them But no one suspected that the missiles the Martians had fi red at us came closer to 7
