Poor Ogilvy had seen the shooting star and believed a meteorite lay somewhere between Horsell Ottershaw and Woking Very early in the morning he went out to fi nd it He found it soon after dawn not far from the sand pits A huge hole had been made by its landing The sand had been tossed in every direction into huge piles that could be seen a mile and a half away The grass was on fi re eastward and thin blue smoke rose above it The Thing lay almost completely buried in sand There were scattered splinters of a tree that had shaken to pieces in the meteorite’s falling The uncovered part of the meteor looked like a huge cylinder It was covered with a thick scaly crust It was about thirty yards around Ogilvy approached it but it was so hot that he could not get close A noise came from inside the cylinder He believed it was the cooling of its surface He never thought it might be hollow inside 10
Ogilvy stood at the edge of the pit amazed at its unusual shape and color There were no sounds of bird or wind only quiet sounds coming from the cylinder He was alone Suddenly Ogilvy noticed that some of the gray ashes covering the meteorite were falling off the round end They dropped off in fl akes A large piece fell with a loud noise For a minute he wasn’t sure what this meant Even though it was still hot he climbed down into the pit to see the Thing more clearly What upset him was that the ash fell only from the end of the cylinder Then Ogilvy saw that very slowly the round top of the cylinder was turning It was such a slow movement that he only noticed it because of a black mark that had been near him fi ve minutes before The mark was now on the other side Ogilvy heard a grating sound and saw the black mark jerk forward The cylinder was hollow and had an end that screwed out 11
Something inside the cylinder was unscrewing the top Good heavens Ogilvy said There are men inside They are half roasted to death and trying to escape Then he linked the Thing with the fl ash on Mars As he thought about the creature trapped inside he tried to get closer The radiation stopped him Instead he ran wildly into the town of Woking He met several people and tried to tell them what was happening but they all thought him crazy and ignored him When Ogilvy saw Henderson a newspaper from London he called out reporter Henderson you saw that shooting star last night Well Henderson said It’s out on the common now Ogilvy said Henderson shouted A fallen meteorite It’s more than a meteorite Ogilvy said And there’s something inside 12
Ogilvy told him all that he’d seen The two men hurried to the cylinder The sounds inside had stopped and a thin circle of bright metal showed between the top and the body of the cylinder Air seeped in or out at the rim making a sizzling sound They listened and tapped on the burned metal with a stick but there was no answer They shouted promises that they would get help and went back to town They got the attention of people who had read newspaper articles about the idea of something coming from Mars Soon a group of boys and men ran for the common to see the dead men from Mars I heard this story from the newspaper boy Soon I was running across the Ottershaw bridge to the sand pits 13
