In the park itself – to Walter’s recollection mainly memorable before that day for its extensive collection of VERBOTEN signs – civilians had been excluded, and soldiers laboured at trenchworks and artillery emplacements. Walter thought he recognised anti-aircraft weapons, even big naval guns, as well as field artillery pieces. But he had no time to pause and study this frantic build-up as he pushed on against the flow.
He tried to understand how it was he had seen the Martian machine off to the north-east. He had been running ahead of their advance from the south-west. In the two advances they had made on London, in 1907 and 1920, they had driven more or less directly into the heart of the city. But the fighting-machines were fast, and it was evident that the Martians had become more flexible in their tactics – and indeed, it would be shown retrospectively that the Martians’ tactics varied around the planet in this war, in part for differences of geography and human resistance, in part, perhaps, through sheer experimentation. Perhaps this assault group which might number hundreds of machines – had split into packs, which were now probing into central Berlin from west, east, even north, as well as directly from the south. This would bring chaos to any planned evacuation of the city, if all possible escape routes were cut off… And if surrounded, Berlin would be turned into a ghetto by the Martians, and a gruesome larder. Some fate for the capital of Prussia, Germany and Mitteleuropa!
But such thoughts were for the future. For now the great narrator continued to drive himself straight towards the centre of events.
He reached the Unter Den Linden near the Brandenburg Gate. And here, to Walter’s surprise, people marched. Walter saw no old folk here, no children, no invalids in bath chairs; these were not refugees. And nor were they military or police; Walter made out only a handful of uniforms, shining brass helmets, standing back from the crowd warily. These marchers were the ordinary folk of the city, mostly young, male and female alike; they were heading steadily east along the great avenue, they carried the flags of Prussia and Germany, as well as crude weapons, poles and clubs, and they sang as they marched, Germany’s anthem, which shared the melody of Britain’s own: ‘Heil dir im Siegerkranz, / Herrscher des Vaterlands! / Heil, Kaiser, dir!…’
Walter consulted his traveller’s atlas and understood. At the eastern end of the Unter Den Linden, over a short bridge onto Museum Island, lay the Stadtschloss, the Kaiser’s city palace. Was Wilhelm in residence today? With Berlin under threat, of course he was. And where else would the people gather but at the palace of the conqueror of France and Russia? It was just as the crowds came to Buckingham Palace on great days in Britain.
‘Fühl in des Thrones Glanz / Die hohe Wonne ganz, / Liebling des Volks zu sein! / Heil Kaiser, dir!…’
On impulse Walter joined the marching throng, heading east towards the palace. The sun was high now, morning mist having burned off to leave a clear and bright day, and, over the heads of the crowd, beyond the rows of leafy trees, the palace was already visible, a blocky mass on the horizon. Walter had always thought he had a side susceptible to persuasion, especially when under stress; he had never forgotten how he had fallen under the spell of Bert Cook, as, on Putney Hill, that undistinguished artilleryman had laid out his plans to defeat the Martians single-handed. Now Walter had to try hard not to lose himself in this marching, singing crowd, in their mass defiance – their mass delusion, he thought, as if a little shouting and a few thousand waved fists might deter an interplanetary invasion.
And then a Martian rose up beyond the palace.
It was clearly visible, silhouetted against the sky, towering over the building like a man standing over a doll’s house. And then another, and another, and more beyond, which Walter saw as shadowy, complex pillars. Cowled heads turned this way and that, as if looking around, curious.
As the Martians were spotted, there were shouts, and cries of dismay – and, yes, more yells of defiance, even insults. The procession stumbled to a halt, the crowd compressing, pushing.
Meanwhile the lead Martian manipulated a cylinder – even so far away, Walter seemed to see every detail, the tentacular appendages cradling the instrument and positioning it carefully. Of course Walter could see nothing of the Heat-Ray itself, at this distance. The heart of the palace exploded, a shower of brick and glass and marble.
More fighting-machines stepped in their eerie triple-legged way through the burning ruin, waded easily through the shallow strait that separated Museum Isle from the mainland – and then strode boldly, and with remarkable speed, straight down the Unter Den Linden.
The crowd broke, lost its shape, turned into a mass of individuals fleeing or fighting to flee. The uniformed soldiers and police who had been supervising them turned and ran too. At last, Walter thought, pushing his way out of the crush, at last this was the social liquefaction he had seen before, the inevitable collapse of all human organisation before the overwhelming might of the Martian machines. But even now one or two resisted the receding tide; they sheltered behind trees and aimed weapons at the struggled to improvise barricades debris.
But the Martians came on, with appalling, overwhelming speed, bowling through the crowd. People were scattered and crushed just by the touch of those mobile, electrified limbs. And the Heat-Ray projectors played, deployed with unerring accuracy and ruthlessness: people flashed and burned, gone in an instant. It was not the slaughtered whose screams Walter heard now, but the screams of the injured, those whom the Heat-Ray beams had touched more carelessly, scorching off a limb, turning a back to a crisped cinder. And now came toofamiliar smells, the stink of roasted flesh, of burned brick, of melting tarmacadam where the Heat-Rays touched the road surface.
The guns in the Tiergarten started to speak at last, a rumbling thunder, and bangs from the big Navy weapons shook the very ground. Walter could see the shells rise, threading through the air. One smashed the bronze face of a Martian; the machine staggered and fell – a few in the fleeing crowd saw this and yelled in triumph – and two of its neighbours gave up the pursuit of the human crowd to bend over it, like soldiers solicitous over a fallen colleague. But as always most of the shells were shot out of the sky by the Heat-Ray, far short of their targets. Worse, errant shells were landing in the fleeing crowd, even as the Martians scythed through that mass of humanity – the Germans were killing more of their own than the Martians.
‘Bows and arrows against the lightning,’ Walter says he murmured to himself. ‘You were right, Bert.’ But they had to try, he realised, the Germans now like the English before them – and, through this last dreadful night, like the Americans and Chinese and Russians and Turks – they had to try. And Walter advancing Martians, or from fencing and other himself, so the deep-buried survivor part of him pressed now, had to save his own much-abused skin.
He joined the crowd pressing back down the Unter Den Linden, heading west once more. If he could get past the Brandenburg Gate, which loomed before him now, he might yet reach the Tiergarten. There the crowd was fanning out, he could see, keeping away from the military emplacements, making for the shade of the trees. Walter had hidden from Martians before, underwater, in wrecked houses; he could do it again.
But the crowd was dense, and going too slowly – and the Martian machines, scattering all before them, were coming up behind much too quickly. Walter pushed at the backs of those ahead of him, squirming through the crush.
And now a new noise erupted, coming from beyond the Gate, directly before Walter, a kind of thunder bellowing down from the sky. People screamed, ducked, scattered: ‘Is it the Martians?’