“Dr Watson, this is my assistant, Mr Morgan,” Challenger made the introductions. “And I see that you have already recognised our crystal egg.”
It lay nested on a crumpled piece of black velvet. I nodded.
“I thought it had been presented to the Astronomer Royal,” I said, stooping above the desk to look.
“No, he is no great improvement in scientific gifts on Stent,” said Challenger. “Holmes and I only turned over the crystal I had taken from that fighting-machine. This is the one that can transmit images across space from planet to planet, and it is far better in my hands than in those of bungling academicians. Morgan, have you seen anything new or interesting to report?”
“Not in particular, Professor,” replied the other, his dark eyes upon me. “They’ve been sending the landscapes again.”
“The landscapes of Venus,” Challenger said to me.
“Not of Mars?”
“The instrument with which they send their images seems to have travelled past us to Venus, in her orbit closer to the sun. Have you not read in the daily papers that astronomers have reported something about an apparent landing on Venus? No, I suppose not. But sit down, Doctor, and look for yourself.”
I dropped into the chair from which Morgan had risen. The crystal reflected a view with no luminous mists to obscure it. It was of a bleak expanse, grey and pallid, with no recognisable growth of vegetation. A haze of dusty clouds drifted in the air, Through this I was able to see a strange assortment of rocks. In the middle distance stood three gaunt pinnacles, like half-dissolved sticks of candy. Beyond them rose a steep bluff, also eroded and worn, and beyond that appeared a murky horizon. Then, as I watched, the whole scene slipped away. I found myself looking into a pair of dark, round eyes with a twitching triangular mouth below them. I had seen such countenances before.
“That is an invader,” I said at once.
“You may call him that for lack of a better term,” said Challenger. “Although at the present he is invading Venus. What he was exhibiting to us just now is a glimpse of the excessively inhospitable planet where he and his companions are waging a most desperate fight for life.”
“How can you know that?” I wondered.
“They are quite adept in conveying information.”
The face had vanished in its turn. Now we could see a sort of shelf or table, with what seemed to be a dark cup clamped in a metal stand. Steamy vapours rose from the cup. A writhing tentacle came into view, pointing. Next moment the scene had abruptly shifted back to the landscape of worn rocks and dusty clouds, and then again to the steaming cup, and at last the peering eyes showed themselves once more.
“You are aware of his information by now,” said Challenger.
“I? It was amazing, somehow frightening. Yet I am obliged to confess it did not seem a clear message to me.”
“Come now, my dear Doctor,” Challenger said in deep organ tones. “I should have thought that you had had some experience of parlour charades and puzzle pictures. Our friend on Venus was offering us a progression of related symbols.”
I shook my head. “I saw an outdoor view, and an indoor view, and a glimpse of his face. No more than that.”
Challenger fixed his heavy-lidded gaze on Morgan, who remained discreetly silent.
“An outdoor view, yes,” he resumed at last. “He showed us the barren surface of the planet Venus. It proves to be a barren world, whipped by dust storms, its very rocks worn to points and knobs by incessant gales. Then there came the steaming container. That, as I gather, signifies an outside temperature exceeding that of boiling water.”
“But nothing could live in such a temperature,” I said.
“No more it could. Such conditions would destroy life as we know it, or as the invaders know it. Somehow they have built themselves a shelter, insulated so as to allow them to exist within it. But they dare not venture themselves in the open; they can observe only from ports or windows.”
Again I looked at the crystal. The image had faded, and blue clouds pulsed within it.
“Professor Challenger, they actually seek to communicate with you,” I said, profoundly impressed.
“They do indeed. By now they have come to realise that in me they have by far the most elevated human comprehension in existence on Earth. You can understand now why I have not put this crystal into the hands of the Astronomer Royal or any other incapable blunderer. Well, Morgan, these are things we have seen before. Have they been sending any other messages?”
“They transmitted these,” replied Morgan, picking up two sheets of neatly pencilled figures. Challenger took them and studied them.
“I have been pleasantly surprised to find out that Morgan has a truly sound natural sense of mathematics,” he said to me. “We have had several such tables as these, decidedly informative about Venus and her drawbacks as a possible abode of life. We have also achieved an exchange of geometrical drawings, and I have made some progress in teaching them the use of our alphabet, with a view toward sending and recieving written messages. All told, we are fast developing a profitable exchange of ideas between our two cultures.”
He said all this with a calm assurance that left me with nothing to say in reply. Again I looked at the crystal. The blue mist was clearing from it.
“They seem ready with something fresh, and I myself shall sit here and watch,” Challenger decided. “Morgan, will you and Dr Watson go out into the study. I should think you would find him interested in learning of our findings these past few weeks. Meanwhile, I shall try to note down whatever further message our friend on Venus may have for me.”
Twenty-Three
Morgan and I went out together into the brighter light of the study. He closed the door and turned to gaze at me. I saw him plainer now. He was middle-sized and slender, thirty years of age or so, with a shrewd, alert face, bright dark eyes, and a respectable height of forehead.
“Are you by any chance the Dr Watson who writes?” he asked.
“Yes, I sometimes write.”
“I’ve read some of your accounts of the cases of Mr Sherlock Holmes.”
I waited for him to elaborate on that, but he only sat down in Challenger’s chair and began to spread out some papers before him.
“I was serving in the artillery,” he said. “My whole regiment was wiped out by the invaders when we tried to fight them down there near Horsell. I escaped by a miracle, more or less, and now I’m on leave while the regiment is reorganising and recruiting.”
His manner of speech suggested that he had a better education and more intelligence than the ordinary soldier.
“How came you here?” I asked.
“Since I was idle and my pay isn’t much, I went looking for work. Just by chance I knocked at Professor Challenger’s door, and he talked to me a while, then took me on as a helper. It’s mostly looking into that crystal he has, trying to make copies of what I see there. Here are some sketches I’ve made, from what they’ve been showing us.”
He handed me a drawing of a circular flying-machine, such as I had seen at Primrose Hill. It was represented as wrecked among eroded rocks. Another drawing was a diagram of one of the invaders’ handling-machines. Both of them were executed with considerable skill and intelligence.
“Did you make those?” I asked. “They seem quite well done.”
“Thank you, sir. I do have a bit of a gift with my pencil. The Professor likes me to draw the things that show in the crystal and sometimes to work up his own sketches.”
“You seem to feel fortunate to have escaped the invaders,” I suggested.
“And so I was. Afterward, there was more fighting, if you care to call it that, and everybody ran before those machines into London. But when I saw the machines were following, to take over there, I stayed where I was and let them go past me. I hid in Putney for days. I looked about me for others who might have escaped and stayed. I thought about living through it — even resistance.”
“Resistance?” I
said after him. “Against the invaders?”
“Oh, something of that sort. Get together some plucky men and women with sense, was my idea. Hide in the cellars and drains, keep out of sight. Try to find out all we could about those creatures, maybe capture and use their weapons. I found only one man in those parts, and he was with me a day or so, and then he wandered off by himself. I was left alone with my planning.”
“But you did plan,” I said. “You planned intelligently and with courage. You should have been with Holmes and Challenger and me in London.”
“I wish I had been, sir. I wish that very much indeed. But in any case, the invasion collapsed. They all died off.”
He said it almost as though he regretted it, as though he would have liked to do some fighting against the alien menace.
“And then?” I prompted him.
“Well, that’s more or less my story, sir. As I said, my regiment has to reorganise and refit and recruit from scratch. Meanwhile, I’m working here for Professor Challenger until I go back.”
“And you are on good terms with those beings now on Venus.”
Morgan smiled. It might have been a joke I had made.
“They’re a different sort of creatures now,” he said. “They’ve had to stop thinking of Earth as a place to live, and men as food and drink. And so they’re trying their luck on Venus. But the luck is worse for them there, if anything.”
“To judge from what I myself saw in the crystal, Venus is hot and lifeless,” I said.
“That’s the right of it, Dr Watson, hotter than boiling water and nothing alive but those invader people, in whatever shelter they’ve been able to rig up. The Professor has it that they came from somewhere beyond this solar system of ours, to set up colonies. And their whole try at doing that has failed. Now they’re trying to exchange their thoughts with us, as if they want to be friends. They’ve even passed on some of their scientific knowledge.”
“That, at least, would be a profit from an acquaintance with them,” I said at once.
Morgan opened the drawer of a side table and rummaged in it.
“We might wind up by learning the secret of their heat-ray,” he said. “See here, Dr Watson.”
He produced a cylindrical porcelain container, somewhat like a jam pot in size and shape, and carefully screwed off the lid. He set it on the table before me and began to fill an old clay pipe.
“There,” said he, “you have the central active element of their heat-ray. I myself fetched this from one of their machines, up there in that great pit on Primrose Hill.”
I looked into the container. At the bottom lay a rounded object, the size of a pea. It had many facets, like a cut gem. To me it seemed to give off a faint light, as did the crystal, but pale pink and ember-like instead of blue.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “The heat-ray was like a great beacon. I never saw one in action, but I’ve been told that it sent out an invisible ray that obliterated houses and sent rivers up in steam.”
He struck a match for his pipe. “I know,” he said. “But what you have there is only the core of the thing. The power it contains is turned on by a switch and directed by a sort of curved reflector. Take it out and look at it closely. Don’t be afraid, it’s quite harmless.”
I gazed at the little pill, hesitating.
“Take it out,” he invited me again. “You will be holding in your hand the very essence of their destructive science.”
“Don’t touch it, Watson!” snapped a voice at the hallway door, and we both looked up.
Sherlock Holmes came striding in. He held a revolver, levelled at Morgan.
Twenty-Four
My dear Holmes, what brings you here?” I cried, but he paid no attention to me. His narrowed eyes were fixed on my companion.
“If that object is harmless, as you say, take it in your own hand,” he ordered Morgan. “Do as I tell you — now, this instant!”
Morgan was out of his chair. He shrank from the table and the container with the object inside. The lid was still in his hand.
“You said that it was harmless,” Holmes reminded him icily. “I heard you as I opened the door. Why do you hesitate to touch it?”
Morgan slammed the lid down on the container and backed another step away. “No,” he stammered. “N-no, I won’t touch it. You can’t make me.”
“Which signifies that you knew that a touch of that object would kill Dr Watson,” Holmes accused. “You would like to kill me, too, I have no doubt.”
“What does he mean, Morgan?” I demanded.
“You do not have his name exactly right, Watson,” said Holmes, the revolver still pointing. “Drop the g and call him Moran. For this is the son of Colonel Sebastian Moran — the second most dangerous man in London, back in 1894 when you helped me capture him in Camden House, just across from our lodgings.”
Moran sagged down in Challenger’s chair again.
“This is fantastic,” he protested, more strongly. “You have nothing against me, Mr Holmes.”
“Which is exactly what all trapped criminals say and very seldom prove. I have just come from tracking down one Ezra Prather.”
Moran started involuntarily as Holmes spoke the name.
“Ah, you know who he is, I perceive,” said my friend triumphantly. “We walked in upon him just as he was in the act of cutting up certain jewels, to make them easier to sell. Caught red-handed, he readily confessed how you and he stole them from their cases in the Tower, on the very day that Challenger telegraphed to Paris the news that the invasion had collapsed.”
Moran stood up again, trembling in every fibre.
“I’ve been doing my best,” he blubbered. “I was a good soldier. I tried to fight the invaders, I was almost killed in action. Here lately I’ve helped Professor Challenger. He will speak to my helping him. Whatever Prather says—”
“And Prather has said a good deal,” said Inspector Stanley Hopkins, also entering through the open door. “He made a full statement to Inspector Lestrade at Scotland Yard and signed it. It tells us all about who you really are, what you did to assist him, and how to find you here.”
He produced a pair of handcuffs. “Place your wrists together,” he ordered.
The fellow mutely held out his arms. I heard the snap of the irons as they locked upon him.
Challenger came bursting from the inner room. “How can I work profitably with all this commotion?” he growled, staring dangerously at Hopkins. “Who are you, sir, and why are you putting those handcuffs on Morgan?”
“His name is Moran, Challenger,” said Holmes, pocketing his revolver, “and he is a thief and a would-be murderer. He tried to kill Watson just now, because Watson once helped me capture his father. You were wishing it was I, weren’t you, Moran?”
“Come along with me,” said Hopkins, his hand on Moran’s arm. “It is my duty to inform you that anything you say will be taken down in writing and may be used against you.”
“Stay,” pleaded Moran suddenly. “Hear me out, hear what I can offer — the secret of the invaders’ heat-ray and how it is used.”
Challenger puffed out his cheeks and locked his brows. “If you know that, you have concealed from me important messages from those creatures on Venus,” he charged. “Whatever your crimes have been, this is a worse one still.”
“I’ll tell you everything,” Moran chattered at us. “Yes, I kept some information. I have whole tables of formulas that explain the power. They tell how to direct impulses that will explode atoms.”
Holmes’ eyes started from his head, and so also must have mine.
“But that is a scientific impossibility,” I gasped. “It has baffled the greatest scientific researchers.”
“Not quite the greatest,” Challenger corrected me. “I have not as yet given the problem my attention.” He tramped toward Moran. “If those formulas are operable, then is your price for them your freedom? Show me those figures, at once.”
Moran lifted his shackled
hands and searched inside his coat. “Here,” he said, bringing a sheaf of folded papers into view. “See for yourself, Professor, if you are able to understand.”
“You insult me by expressing any doubt of that,” Challenger said harshly as he snatched the papers.
He spread them out in both his hands and studied them. His eyes gleamed in his shaggy face. Holmes struck a match.
“By God, you are right,” Challenger roared out in his excitement. “To a well-informed, highly capable intellect, this summation — yes, and this, the building upon it—is comprehensible. It is the most amazing—”
Holmes made a lightning-swift stride. In his outstretched hand was the lighted match. He held it to the papers in Challenger’s fist.
They blazed up, with a howl Challenger dropped them on the floor. They blazed brightly while, Challenger nursed his burnt fingers.
“Holmes, are you utterly mad?” he yelled.
“Utterly sane, as I hope,” replied Holmes evenly. “Sane enough to be disturbed at the sight of a brilliant chimpanzee experimenting with his trainer’s loaded pistol.”
Challenger knelt beside the burning papers. They fell into grey ashes.
“Lost!” he lamented, rising again. “Morgan... Moran... if that is your right name — do you remember—”
Morgan shook his head in despair. “No, sir, I only wrote down the figures from the crystal. It would be impossible to reproduce them.”
“Lost,” groaned Challenger again, pressing his hands to his temples.
“Then let man himself find out the secret,” said Holmes. “With a weapon such as exploding atoms, he could easily destroy himself and all his world around him. If in future he finds the wisdom to solve the mystery, perhaps he will at the same time achieve for himself the control that having such power must entail.”
Challenger breathed heavily for a long moment. I wondered if he would throw himself upon my friend.
“I must endorse that proposition,” he said at last. “It should not have been necessary for me to have been reminded by you, Holmes. Now and then I think too much in the abstract. It is a fault I should overcome.”
War of the Worlds Page 19
