by Mike Brunton
The third species of Martian that arrived aboard the Cylinders was, of course, the ‘Red Weed’. While most casual observers considered it a plant, it was more like a fast-growing fungus. Its hideous tendrils and intense vibrant colour certainly gave it an unearthly, unnatural appearance, and its growth rate made it look more ‘alive’ and purposeful than it really proved to be. In Earth’s oxygen-rich atmosphere and water-rich environment, its spores were able to infect and then destroy most other plants and fungi. It grew extremely rapidly in the presence of fresh water, and could spread along the banks of a river, canal or drainage ditch at anything up to 10ft (3m) per hour in ideal conditions. Rainfall, in particular, seemed to send the Weed into a frenzy of growth, giving rise to the popular belief that the Weed was alive (which it was, but not in the sense that common folk feared) and had a malevolent intelligence all of its own (which it did not). Fortunately, the Red Weed did not grow on animal or human flesh.
It threw off spores very quickly on reaching maturity, usually within a day or so, and these were carried for great distances by the wind. There were reports of Red Weed colonies being found in Holland, northern Germany and Denmark during and shortly after the Invasion. Whenever and wherever these growths were spotted they were put to the torch by terrified locals and soldiers. The Red Weed tied down troops that might otherwise have been sent to England to ‘help’ against the Martians. It also reminded every European government that Earth was horribly vulnerable.
The Red Weed reached central London before the Martians themselves, and soon overran the parks, most private gardens and, to a limited extent, both banks of the Thames. The polluted state of the river actually stopped the Thames disappearing. Even though Joseph Bazalgette’s immense sewer system, completed in the 1870s, kept the worst of London’s waste out of the Thames, it was still foul and polluted by modern standards. The Weed, however, made its way upstream into cleaner water at its usual tremendous rate, swiftly choking off much of the Thames’ flow. By 13 August, the Red Weed had moved along the Isis as far as Oxford and caused a panic in government circles. Local troops were diverted to attack the Weed with hastily contrived gas burners. The burners worked, but the threat to Oxford did not last long: the Weed started to die back within weeks of the Martians’ demise. Like the Martians, it had no resistance to Earth diseases or, for that matter, insects. While cattle and sheep would not eat the Weed, insects had no trouble with this new food. For a while, it looked as if southern England was suffering a second invasion, this time of aphids. The tiny creatures swarmed and multiplied on the Red Weed, until colder weather killed off the tiny pests.
Salt and brackish water, as well as salt marshes, proved a sterling defence against the Red Weed. Rather wisely, plans to kill the Weed by spraying it with saline were rejected. The contamination would have made much farmland useless for years, and Lord Salisbury had conniptions at the very thought of ‘socialist’ monetary compensation for anyone outside a small group of influential landowners.
THE FIGHTING MACHINES
During and after the Invasion, ‘Fighting Machine’ and ‘Martian’ were synonymous for Britons. Few humans ever saw a Martian in the flesh and lived to tell the tale, so ordinary people came to regard the machines as the true invaders. Their towering presence made them a sight that, once seen, was never forgotten. The Fighting Machines show that the Martians, despite what their misguided human apologists claimed, never had peaceful intentions. These murderous devices were useful only for an invasion, not a trade mission or a pleasant diplomatic soiree.
Standing some 135ft (40m) high, Fighting Machines loomed over their human enemies, implacable metal giants that could strike down enemies with fire and poison. They were armoured to withstand human weapons (the Fighting Machines were not invulnerable; they only looked and behaved that way), and fast: terribly, awfully, hideously fast. The machines could sprint at around 50mph (80km/h) over open ground, although obstacles like woodland and buildings reduced this speed. Other than railway locomotives, nothing human could travel at such speed. It took bravery and discipline to stand against such monsters and, by and large, the British Army stood its ground.
Only one image of a Heat Ray was published during the Invasion, and none after it. Details were deliberately obscured to keep its workings secret from foreign powers. The Martian artefacts displayed at the Natural History Museum in South Kensington did not include Heat Rays or Black Smoke generators. It is rumoured that Martian weapons are on show in the secure displays at the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom, Shrivenham.
On top of the three legs perched a precarious-looking control cabin. Legs and cabin alike were constructed of an iridescent material with a metallic sheen. The few pieces that escaped government confiscation have a strange, hexagonal pattern within their surface, almost like skin or bark. They are also a ceramic-metal composite, although few collectors are willing to have their Martian memorabilia damaged for any analysis. Despite the lolloping gait of the tripod legs, the cabins were stabilized and entirely steady no matter what the machine did as a whole. A single viewing port at the front of the cabin gave the controlling Martian a view out and down onto his battlefield. This was a commanding view of the action, and certainly contributed to the Martians’ easy early victories. They could quite clearly see everything that their opponents were doing. British troops had no conception that they needed to hide from the prying eyes of giants!
Beside the viewing port were the Machine’s weapons, the Heat Ray and the Black Smoke generator, mounted in a turret for use against ground targets. The turret was designed in such a way that weapon elevation, particularly with the Heat Ray, was awkward. The weapon couldn’t be raised more than a few degrees above horizontal, and the Machine had to ‘lean’ back on its rear leg for some shots. The Royal Engineers’ observation balloons sent from Aldershot were, for example, not quite the death traps that their users supposed. More often than not, Martians shooting at high targets were hopelessly inaccurate. Below the cabin hung a cluster of metal tentacles; these were used to demolish buildings or carry a fallen War Machine from battle.
While the mechanism and physics of the Heat Ray were utterly baffling to those who faced it in 1895, we can now say with some certainty that it was an immensely powerful laser beam. Lasers are now used for many purposes from surgery (cutting and cauterizing flesh) through to cutting steel, measuring distances with tremendous accuracy, and carrying information. It was the destructive power of lasers that the Martians had harnessed for their weaponry. In fact, given that the ray itself was described as invisible, the Heat Ray was almost certainly a maser, ‘microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation’. The physics behind both are almost identical, differing only in the wavelength of the electromagnetic radiation (light) produced, and lasers and masers can both ‘cook’ a target.
A laser or maser is, in theory, quite a simple device with no moving parts, but it is something that requires considerable technology to make. At its simplest, it consists of a ‘pump’ or light source to begin the process, a ‘laser medium’ (a substance to have energy ‘pumped’ into it), and a pair of reflective mirrors (one only partially reflective) to act as an optical resonator. Between the mirrors, the light waves bounce backwards and forwards until released in a single beam of incredibly energetic radiation. The laser medium determines the light wavelength produced, and the mirrors bounce this light back and forth, reinforcing the waves in the process. Eventually, the light waves pass through the partially reflective mirror as a beam, and so the Martians had a Heat Ray. All kinds of materials can be used as a laser medium, and we have no way of knowing exactly what the Martians used. Given their scientific knowledge and elegant engineering, it was something that was easily available and convenient.
Shots from the Heat Ray travelled at the speed of light. If a Martian could see a target, he could kill it. It was entirely a point-and-shoot weapon; the operator had no need to take into account ballistics, wind, weather or even the target’s movements.
The Heat Ray must also have had a variable output, given that it could kill a single individual or melt a hole through a battleship’s plating.
Black Smoke was made of weaponized carbon, the basic building block of life. It was not ‘smoke’ at all, but an aerosol of powdered carbon nanotubes. Nanotubes are carbon atoms arranged into tube-like lattices; diamonds and graphite are carbon with different arrangements of atoms. And like diamonds, nanotubes have their uses. Potentially, they are very strong indeed and they are beginning to have uses in all kinds of engineering. But nanotubes cause health problems if not handled properly, and this was what made the Black Smoke deadly. The Smoke suffocated anyone who breathed it in, as it coated the lungs and prevented respiration. Most victims died quickly, killed as they gasped for air.
Very small quantities were deadly over a longer timescale. It is now known that nanotubes can be absorbed into the body, accumulating in the gel-like cytoplasm inside cells, so killing them off. On a larger scale nanotubes cause asbestosis-like symptoms, and even cancer, in people exposed to non-lethal amounts. No one thought about such health problems in 1895 but, looking at the Registrar General’s weekly returns of deaths, southern England and the London area had a huge increase in deaths related to lung disease, influenza, TB, and other bronchial conditions in the decade after the Invasion, in those old enough to have been alive at the time. Winters were not harsher than in previous years, but more people died during them than had previously been the case. Many who lived through the Invasion also suffered from eye conditions in later years.
The Black Smoke also had one other effect: it was a good complement to the Heat Ray because it had excellent thermal conductivity. A coating of Black Smoke dust would make almost anything vulnerable to the Heat Ray. Finally, a War Machine could shoot out a stream of Black Smoke, rather like a (later) human flamethrower could shoot a jet of burning fuel at a target.
The British Army’s standard 12-pounder field gun was a reliable and accurate weapon, but it required a cool-headed gunner to hit a War Machine. It proved suicidal to attempt a second or third shot against Heat Ray-armed Martians.
From the few notes that survive outside sealed government archives, the interior of the control cabin was intended to fit a single Martian pilot. Described as ‘disturbingly small’ by some, the compartment was only a little larger than a Martian pilot. Below the armoured hatch, there was a couch for the pilot, numerous levers for his many tentacles and a curious ‘skull cap’ with many cables emerging from it. What struck those who saw inside the cabins were three things. Firstly, there were no dials or gauges or any other kind of display to tell the driver how the machine was operating or if anything needed attention. Secondly, not a single control was labelled as to its function (although no one expected to be able to read Martian script). Apparently, the remarkable Martian brain allowed the pilot to memorize every control. Looking back, we can make an educated guess that there were head-up displays on the cabin portal, or that the Martian pilot had some kind of direct neural link to the War Machine. Neither of these ideas would have even occurred to a Victorian. They saw only a confusion of controls. Thirdly, the cabin was armoured, so the Martians were expecting resistance and valued their lives.
A modern observer, with the benefit of a hundred years of science fact and fiction, might have concluded that the War Machine was a suit of powered armour for its occupant rather than a vehicle. This exo-skeleton quality would have made the burden of Earth gravity more bearable to any Martian user.
Available records show that investigators were baffled by not finding a recognizable power source: there was no steam or internal combustion engine. There was a helpful clue that meant little at the time: most people who sat inside a War Machine got a case of sunburn. It faded after a few days, but could well be low-level radiation exposure. The Martian machines were probably nuclear powered, and may even have carried small fusion reactors. To any observer in 1895 such a thing would have been utterly mysterious.
Communications equipment was not found. Guglielmo Marconi was experimenting with wireless telegraphy when the Martians landed; his success lay a year in the future. Later, it was realized that there were no Martian wireless sets. This was taken as proof of Martian telepathy: the Martians didn’t need radio.
THE HANDLING MACHINES
Unlike War Machines, Handling Machines were not designed for battle. The immensely strong Handling Machines stood on six legs (this gave them a greater stability when carrying heavy loads) and were around 80ft (25m) tall to the top of the operator’s cabin. They were not quite as fast as War Machines, but were a good deal more capable when crossing broken ground such as rubble and scrubland. A War Machine could inflict mass destruction in seconds; a Handling Machine, on the other hand, made death feel very personal indeed.
The Handling Machines were used as a form of mobile crane and ‘wearable workshop’ by the Martians. They did not carry a Heat Ray, but had a large number of heavy-duty tentacles; accounts differ as to the number, but there were always at least five. The tentacles did everything from digging out Cylinders and creating defensive earthworks, to recovering and repairing Fighting Machines and hunting humans. The Handling Machine at the original Horsell Common site spent many hours creating a defensive embankment to protect the first Cylinder; at Westminster a Handling Machine carried away the wrecked War Machine from Parliament Square.
The Handling Machine’s cross-country speed made it impossible for people on foot to escape once the Martian pilot wanted to capture them. A Handling Machine’s tentacles meant that it could rip apart almost any structure to ‘dig out’ its prey if humans tried to hide. At least one Handling Machine had a large cage on its back for human prisoners. The Martians came to Earth prepared to capture humans rather than destroy us all on sight.
The Handling Machines did carry a means to neutralize the Black Smoke. On at least one occasion a Handling Machine sprayed ‘steam’ into a cloud of the Smoke, and turned it into a thick, cloying slime that clung onto everything. This slime was just as deadly to humans (indeed, all mammals) as the Smoke itself. However, it did clear the air very quickly, presumably so that Martians could see their victims.
The ratio of War Machines to Handling Machines was around 5 to 1, about what one might expect of the infantry-to-supporting-troops ratio in a human force. The Martians had definitely come for conquest, not to build…
THE CYLINDERS AND THE LAUNCH CANNON
The Martian Cylinders were the means by which the invasion force reached Earth. They resembled huge artillery shells, hollowed out to carry the Martians, their slaves and their equipment. Each was some 100ft (30m) in diameter (around 90ft (27m) internally, allowing for the heavily shielded wall) and some 260ft (80m) in length. The nose was a blunt cone, and the whole of the back end was a circular, screw-fitting hatch. Such a description does not do justice to a Cylinder’s menacing bulk, or to the tremendous engineering skill that it represented.
It did not take long for scientists to work out that one or more giant guns on Mars had launched the Cylinders. A gun design that, suitably scaled up, could fire a projectile across interplanetary distances was already known. By 1895 engineers (including Frenchman Louis-Guillaume Perreaux, whose steam velocipede was a forerunner of the motorcycle) had already proposed guns with multiple firing chambers. These, ignited in turn, propelled a missile up a single barrel at tremendous speed. This explained the gas clouds that had been observed spurting from the planet months and weeks before the landings: these were the muzzle blasts. As was discovered later, Mars had a perfect platform for an interplanetary cannon: Olympus Mons. This mountain is so tall that it sticks out of the Martian atmosphere into space. Martian engineering could easily have created a barrel along its slopes. A launcher on Olympus Mons would have been hundreds of miles long, but with solid foundations for almost its entire length.
Equally impressive are the mathematical and practical skills needed to fire a Cylinder across at least 34 million miles (54 mil
lion km) and hit a small island on Earth. As if this wasn’t enough the Martians chose exactly, to within half a mile (approximately 1km), where they wanted the Cylinders to land. The scattering of landing sites was not, as some claimed, random chance. The Martians dropped their troops on their expected battle lines. The second Cylinder landed in Woking near the Horsell Common landing; later ones were always further away, and the final arrivals were dropping into the centre of London. The Martians intended their later Cylinders to be battlefield reinforcements. This implies superb control over the launch and flight of each Cylinder, and immense confidence in their calculations.
The Cylinders used aero-braking when landing, each deploying an immense shield to slow the dive into Earth’s atmosphere. Unlike a parachute which trails behind the braking vehicle, aero-braking relies on air resistance ahead of the speeding object to slow down. Heating by friction can be intense, and this alone explains the heat given off by Cylinders once they had crashed to Earth. It also explains the immense fiery trails that were seen in Earth’s skies before the landings. Other than soot stains on the outside of the Cylinders, no trace of these aero-brakes was ever found. The Martians’ mastery of carbon technology perhaps explains this, with their carbon fibre aero-brakes being consumed during braking.
Conditions inside would have been hellish for a human, as not one Cylinder had windows or any kind of logical ‘up’ or ‘down’. Each cylinder had compartments for passengers and for storage, but these were not arranged in orderly decks as on a human vessel. Instead, each compartment was part of a hive, nest or maze within the internal space. Very little space was wasted and, although it would have driven a human to distraction with its seeming disorder, the Martians must have been happy with the arrangement. Most compartments were filled with a jelly-like substance to provide protection for passengers during the voyage. It is possible that the Martians were asleep, hibernating perhaps, for the entire trip. Each Cylinder also had cushioned bays for servitors, presumably brought to Earth as ‘field rations’ before humans could be taken captive.
