Sometimes a Martian voice we heard was hard, with what we on Earth would call a sneer lending an unpleasant edge to it; another would seem musical and soft by comparison. Some Martians would speak with a complex sibilance, others with protracted vowel-sounds and pronounced plosives.
Further complicating everything was the fact that all Martians appeared to accompany their conversation with elaborate hand and head movements, and additionally would address some Martians with one voice-tone, and others in a different way.
Also, the slave-Martians appeared to have a dialect all of their own.
After several days of trying, Amelia came to the sad conclusion that the complexity of the language (or languages) was beyond her. Even so, until our last days together in Desolation City she was trying to identify individual sounds, and I was very admiring of her diligence.
There was, though, one vocal sound whose meaning was unmistakable. It was a sound common to all races on Earth, and had the same meaning on. Mars. That was the scream of terror, and we were to hear much of that eventually.
ix
We had been in Desolation City for fourteen days when the epidemic struck. At first we were unaware that anything was amiss, although we noticed some early effects without realizing the cause. Specifically, this was that one evening there seemed to be far fewer Martians present in the dining hall, but so accustomed were we to odd things on this world that neither of us attributed to it anything untoward.
The day following was the one on which we witnessed the firing of the snow-cannon (for such was what we came to call it) and so our interests lay elsewhere. But by the end of those days when snow fell more or less without let over the city, there was no mistaking that something was seriously wrong. We saw several Martians dead or unconscious in the streets, a visit to one of the dormitories was confirmation enough that many of the people were ill, and even the activities of the vehicles reflected a change, for there were fewer of them about and one or two were clearly being used as ambulances.
Needless to say, as the full realization came to us, Amelia and I stayed away from the populated areas of the city. Fortunately, neither of us displayed any symptoms; the stuffiness as a result of my head-cold stayed with me rather longer than it might have done at home, but that was all.
Amelia’s latent nursing instincts came to the surface, and her conscience told her she should go to help the sick, but it would have been grossly unwise to do so. We tried to cut ourselves off from the anguish, and hoped the, disease would soon pass.
It seemed that the plague was not virulent. Many people had contracted it, and by the evidence of the number of bodies we saw being transported in one of the legged vehicles we knew that many had died. But after five days we noticed that life was beginning to return to normal. If anything, there was more misery about than ever before—for once we felt the Martians had good cause—and there were, regrettably, even fewer people in the underpopulated city, but the vehicles returned to their policing and haulage, and we saw no more dead in the streets.
But then, just as we were sensing the return to normal, there came the night of the green explosions.
Chapter Ten
A TERRIBLE INVASION
i
I was awakened by the first concussion, but in my sleepy state I presumed that the snow-cannon had been fired once more.
During those nights of its firing we had grown accustomed to the tremors and distant explosions. The bang that woke me, though, was different.
“Edward?”
“I’m awake,” I said. “Was that the cannon again?”
“No, it was different. And there was a flash, It lighted the whole room.”
I stayed silent, for I had long since learned the futility of speculating about what we saw in this place. A few minutes passed, and the city was unmoving.
“It was nothing,” I said. “Let’s go back to sleep.”
“Listen.”
Some distance away, across the sleeping city, a policing-vehicle was driving quickly, its banshee siren howling. A moment later a second one started up, and passed within a few streets of where we lay.
Just then the room was lit for an instant with the most vivid and lurid flash of green. In its light I saw Amelia sitting up in her hammock, clutching her quilt around her. A second or two later we heard a tremendous explosion, somewhere beyond the city’s limits.
Amelia climbed with the usual difficulty from the hammock, and walked to the nearest window.
“Can you see anything?”
“I think there’s a fire,” she said. “It’s difficult to tell. There is something burning with a green light.”
I started to move from my hammock, for I wished to see this, but Amelia stopped me.
“Please don’t come to the window,” she said. “I am unclothed.”
“Then please put something on, for I wish to see what is happening.”
She turned and hurried towards where she placed her clothes at night, and as she did so the room was once more filled with brilliant green light. For a moment I caught an inadvertent glimpse of her, but managed to look away in time to spare her embarrassment. Two seconds later there was another loud explosion; this was either much closer or much larger, for the ground shook with the force of it.
Amelia said: “I have my chemise on, Edward. You may come to the window with me now.”
I normally slept wearing a pair of the Martian trouser-garments, and so climbed hastily from the hammock and joined her at the window. As she had said, there was an area of green light visible away towards the east. It was neither large nor bright, but it had an intensity about the centre of the glow that would indicate a fire. It was dimming as we watched it, but then came another explosion just beside it and I pulled Amelia away from the window. The blast effect was this time the greatest yet, and we began to grow frightened.
Amelia stood up to look through the window again, but I placed my arm around her shoulder and pulled her forcibly away.
Outside, there was the sound of more sirens, and then another flash of green light followed by a concussion.
“Go back to the hammocks, Amelia,” I said. “At least on those we will be shielded from the blast through the floor.”
To my surprise Amelia did not demur, but walked quickly towards the nearest hammock and climbed on. I took one more look in the direction of the explosions, staring past the watch-tower that stood outside our building and seeing the ever-spreading diffusion of green fire. Even as I looked there was another brilliant flare of green light, followed by the concussion, and so I hurried over to the hammocks.
Amelia was sitting up in the one I normally used.
“I think tonight I should like you to be with me,” she said, and her voice was trembling. I too felt a little shaken, for the force of those explosions was considerable, and although they were a good distance away were certainly greater than anything in my experience.
I could just make out her shape in the darkened room. I had been holding the edge of the hammock in my hand, and now Amelia reached forward and touched me. At that moment there was yet another flash, one far brighter than any of the others. This time the shock-wave, when it came, shook the very foundations of the building. With this, I threw aside my inhibitions, climbed on to the hammock, and wriggled under the quilt beside Amelia. At once her arms went around me, and for a moment I was able to forget about the mysterious explosions outside.