VIII.

by H. G. Wells

FRIDAY NIGHT.

The most remarkable thing about that Friday night, in my opinion, was how the ordinary routines of our lives intertwined with the beginnings of a series of events that would soon upend everything we knew. If you had taken a compass and drawn a five-mile radius around the Woking sand-pits, you would have found very few people outside that circle—perhaps a few relatives of Stent or the cyclists and Londoners who lay dead on the common. While many had heard about the cylinder and discussed it in passing, it certainly didn’t create the kind of buzz that an ultimatum to Germany would have.

In London that night, poor Henderson’s telegram detailing the gradual unscrewing of the cylinder was dismissed as a hoax. His evening paper, after trying to confirm the story and receiving no response—Henderson was dead—decided against printing a special edition.

Even within that five-mile radius, most people remained oblivious. I’ve already described the reactions of those I spoke to. Across the area, people were having dinner and supper; working men tended to their gardens after a long day, children were being tucked into bed, and young couples strolled through the lanes, lost in love. Students sat absorbed in their books.

There may have been some murmurs in the village streets, a new topic of conversation in the pubs, and occasionally a messenger or an eyewitness of the later events would stir up a flurry of excitement, shouting, and running about. But for the most part, life continued as it always had—working, eating, drinking, sleeping—unaffected by the events unfolding above them. It was as if Mars didn’t even exist in the night sky. This was true even at Woking station and in Horsell and Chobham.

At Woking Junction, trains continued to arrive and depart late into the night, with others shunting on the sidings. Passengers were getting on and off, and everything seemed perfectly normal. A boy from town, encroaching on Smith’s territory, was selling papers with the afternoon news. The clattering of trucks and the sharp whistles of the engines mixed with the shouts of “Men from Mars!” Excited men arrived at the station around nine o’clock with unbelievable news, causing no more of a stir than drunken patrons might have. Passengers heading toward London peered into the darkness outside their carriage windows, seeing only a flickering spark dancing from the direction of Horsell, a red glow and a thin veil of smoke drifting across the stars, and assumed it was nothing more serious than a heath fire. Only around the edges of the common was any real disturbance noticeable. A few villas were ablaze on the Woking border, and lights shone in all the houses on the common side of the three villages, where residents stayed awake until dawn.

A curious crowd gathered restlessly, with people coming and going but the crowd remaining, both on the Chobham and Horsell bridges. A couple of brave souls ventured into the darkness, crawling close to the Martians, but they never returned. Occasionally, a beam of light, like a warship’s searchlight, swept across the common, ready to unleash the Heat-Ray. Aside from that, the vast area of common lay silent and desolate, with charred bodies scattered across it under the stars, remaining there all night and throughout the next day. Many people heard the sound of hammering coming from the pit.

So, this was the state of affairs on Friday night. At the center, embedded in the skin of our old planet like a poisoned dart, was the cylinder. But the poison hadn’t fully taken effect yet. Surrounding it was a patch of silent common, smoldering in places, with a few dark shapes lying twisted and contorted here and there. Here and there, a bush or tree burned. Beyond that, there was a fringe of excitement, but the chaos hadn’t spread much farther. In the rest of the world, life continued to flow as it always had for countless years. The fever of war that would soon choke the veins, dull the senses, and destroy minds had yet to develop.

All night long, the Martians were busy, hammering and stirring, tirelessly working on the machines they were preparing, with puffs of greenish-white smoke swirling up into the starlit sky.

Around eleven o'clock, a group of soldiers marched through Horsell and spread out along the edge of the common to create a cordon. Later, a second company made its way through Chobham to position themselves on the north side of the common. Earlier that day, several officers from the Inkerman barracks had been on the common, and one of them, Major Eden, was reported missing. The colonel of the regiment arrived at Chobham bridge and was busy questioning the crowd well into midnight. It was clear that the military authorities were taking the situation seriously. By the next morning, the papers reported that a squadron of hussars, two Maxims, and about four hundred men from the Cardigan regiment had set out from Aldershot.

Just after midnight, the crowd on the Chertsey road in Woking witnessed a star falling from the sky into the pine woods to the northwest. It glowed with a greenish hue, casting a silent brightness reminiscent of summer lightning. This marked the arrival of the second cylinder.