CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

THE RUINED HOUSE

Habitant of castle gray, creeping thing in sober way.

—William Ellery Channing

Alex Smith, 3 Bi-January, Mars Year i

Marin County, California, Planet Earth

After eating our fill we crept back into the storage area, and I dozed again. When I awoke I was alone. The thudding continued without cease, giving me a persistent, throbbing headache to go with the head injury that I’d received. I whispered Lesley’s name several times, and at last felt my way to the door of the kitchen. It was now daylight, and I saw her lying with her face pressed against the hole that looked out onto the Martian pit. Her shoulders were hunched over, and her head was hidden from me.

I could hear loud, rhythmic noises outside, like those generated by a garage; and the ruined kitchen continued to rock with an incessant thud-thud-thudding sound that reminded me of the bass reverberations of hip-hop music—what I call “rap-shit.” Through the gap in the wall I could just see the top of a tree touched with gold and the warm blue of a tranquil evening sky. I could even hear a bird or two chirping away over the clatter. I advanced carefully amidst the broken glass littering the floor, struggling to keep silent.

I touched Lesley’s leg, and she jumped so violently that a piece of plaster went sliding down the outside of the house and fell into the pit with a loud rattling noise. I gripped her arm, fearing that she might cry out, and for a long time we crouched there motionless. Then I turned to see how much of our wall remained. The falling masonry had opened a vertical slit in the debris; by raising myself cautiously over a beam I was able to peer through the gap onto what a few nights ago had been a quiet suburban California street.

The ship had plopped onto the home next door, utterly obliterating the building. It now lay buried in a hole that was already larger than the pit I’d seen at Novato. The earth surrounding it had splashed upward under the impact of the landing—”splashed” is the only word that describes it—creating mounds of dirt that hid the adjoining houses from sight.

Our own structure had collapsed onto its front section, destroying most of the ground floor; but the kitchen and storeroom and the entrance to the basement had somehow escaped, although buried under tons of soil. It was closed off except in the direction of the ship. We were perched on the edge of the huge circular excavation that the aliens were creating. The heavy equipment generating the beating noise was hidden from us. A pale green vapor rose like a veil across our peephole, giving off a faint metallic odor.

The spaceship had already unfolded itself: on the far rim stood one of the great striders, its hatch ajar, looming stiff and stark against the evening sky. At first I hardly noticed it, because of the extraordinary device I saw at the center of the pit.

It was one of those things that have since been labeled “handling-machines,” the study of which has given us some basic knowledge of Martian science. It had the appearance of a spider with six jointed, articulate legs, plus an arrangement of metal attachments and tentacles protruding from its body. These arms were often retracted, but this particular machine was using three of its “hands” to fish out a number of rods, plates, and bars that had lined the interior of the ship, apparently serving to strengthen its structure during its transit to Earth. The bars were being deposited on the surface next to the pit.

Its motion was so swift and perfect that at first I didn’t even regard it as a machine, in spite of its glitter. The fighting-machines were marvelous things, to be sure, but nothing compared to this. Folks who’ve never seen these devices scarcely have any idea of the “living” quality they evinced.

You may recall the photos published in People in one of the first accounts of the war. Malletoni made a very hasty study of the striders, with appropriate illustrations of the surviving wrecks. The article presented them as rigid tripods, lacking flexibility or subtlety, suggesting that Earth had been attacked by a horde of stiff-necked robots. Of course, nothing was further from the truth. The issue sold out immediately. The documentaries on CNN and the National Geographic Channel were similarly “dry” and uninformative, giving a barebones description of the Martian devices, but little more. They universally failed to convey the vitality of the alien machinery.

At first, as I said, the handling-device didn’t impress me much as a machine. It appeared almost like a large crab with a glittering carapace. A Martian sat inside and directed the thing with its own tentacles, the equivalent of the creature’s central brain. But then I realized just how much the mechanism resembled the other Martian devices, and even the aliens themselves, with its gray-brown, shiny, almost leathery covering—and the true nature of the “handler” suddenly dawned on me. The artifact combined both organic materials and metal alloys, blending them together in an intricate combination of power and efficiency and beauty. None of our engineers has ever been able to duplicate one of these machines, or even to get one of the relics left by the aliens working again.

I wanted objectively to record the events that I witnessed here. Suddenly I was aware of a rancid odor emanating from the pit, like a pail of shellfish that’s been left out in the sun too long. It was sickening.

I then examined the Martians themselves more closely. Already I’d formed a general impression of these creatures. The initial nausea I’d experienced no longer bothered me, although the pervasive stench was unsettling at times. Since I was fully hidden, I could easily observe the comings and goings in the pit.

The aliens’ bodies consisted of a huge, humped, round head about four feet in diameter, with a silly, oversized, almost cartoonish grin plastered over the front. They had no nose as such—the Martians didn’t seem to have any sense of smell, and I wasn’t really sure at that point how they breathed. I saw a pair of very large, dark-hued eyes, almost black in color, and beneath them a kind of fleshy beak, similar to that of an octopus or squid. The creatures were finally dissected by Herr Doktor Franz-Ferdinand von Jarmann in the months following the war; he stated that they combined elements of shellfish, insects, and crustaceans, all mixed together in ways that should have been biologically impossible.

At the back of the “body”—I don’t know how else to describe it—was a small “drum” that served as an ear, although it must have been almost useless in our dense atmosphere. Grouped around the mouth was a set of short feelers, almost like wormy whiskers. At the base of the creature’s body were sixteen slender, whip-like tentacles, arranged in two bunches of eight each. Four were longer than the others. These Martian “hands,” as Jarmann termed them, seemed both flexible and versatile. The aliens seemed to be trying to raise their bodies using these “hands,” but this was difficult with the increased weight generated by our gravity. On Mars they could have moved around with ease, but on Earth it’s a wonder they could even breathe.

The creatures’ internal anatomy, as Doktor Jarmann’s lengthy investigations have since shown, was fairly simple, being dominated by a large brain. They also had rather a bulky lung into which the mouth opened, a large heart, and unusually thin blood vessels. The pulmonary distress caused by our denser atmosphere and gravitational force was all too evident in the constant convulsive movements of the creatures’ outer skin.

The Martians had no digestive tract as such. They were mostly heads—just heads. Stomach, intestines, and colon were nonexistent. They “ate” by drinking the living fluid of warm-blooded creatures directly into their veins, piped there by means of a small tube that they extended from their mouths. I suppose you could call them vampires of a sort. I later witnessed one of the feedings myself.

This type of diet might seem gross to us, but our own eating habits would probably appear just as disgusting to an intelligent rabbit, if such existed.

The advantages of this kind of physiology are clear. Our bodies have to turn solid food into useful nutrients. The Martians bypass such necessities by being biological parasites. They may regard us as little more than sources of potential nourishment.

Although there’s some evidence (see “A Diet of Worms?” by Lance K. Perth, The Journal of Exobiology) that they also fed on the blood of other mammals during their brief sojourn on earth, the aliens seemed to prefer man as their primary source of nourishment. This can partially be explained by the remains of the victims they brought with them as provisions from Mars. These creatures, to judge by the shriveled bodies recovered from the alien ships, were bipeds with flimsy skeletons and a feeble musculature, standing about six feet high, and having round, erect heads, with large eyes protruding from flinty sockets. A number were included in each ship, but all were killed before the aliens landed on Earth. Perhaps this was just as well, for merely attempting to stand upright on our planet would have broken every bone in their fragile bodies. There’s some question, however, whether the aliens actually found human blood “tasty,” or whether it even provided sufficient nutrients to sustain their lives for any great length of time—or even if this was their preferred choice.

Professor Jarmann has noted three other areas where the Martian physiology likely differed from our own. They apparently didn’t sleep, any more than our own hearts sleep. The aliens would have experienced little or no sense of fatigue as we know it. On Earth their movements required enormous expenditures of energy, far greater than they would have needed on their homeworld; and yet to the very end they kept pressing forward, never ceasing their efforts. During a twenty-four-hour period they performed twenty-four hours of work, just like a nest of ants or wasps.

The Martians had also dispensed with sex. A young alien was actually born on Earth; it was found attached to its parent, partially budded off, just as certain sea creatures on our world propagate asexually. In man, indeed, in all of the higher terrestrial animals, asexual reproduction has long since been abandoned; on Mars, however, evolution apparently veered in another direction.

This development had previously been postulated by several well-known sci-fi writers. The Coming of the Eggheads, by Bunny Barlevin, postulates that giant, pea-brained chickens will one day rise from their coops to conquer mankind, spreading their seeds of sappiness throughout modern civilization. Menlo P. Menville’s Big Brains of San Berdoo suggests that we have nothing to fear but our organs themselves; the revolting revulsion that we’ll feel when our real personas begin to emerge from their collective chrysalides is beyond mankind’s complete comprehension; several critics felt, however, that it was his novel that was beyond anyone’s comprehension. Robot Get Your Gun, published in hardcover by Underhill Books, notes that the perfection of mechanical devices must ultimately supersede organic limbs, and that organs such as hair, nose, teeth, ears, and chin will become nonessential parts of the human anatomy in the future. Only the brain, author Lambie Wilhelm suggests, will remain necessary, with just one other part of the body making a strong case for survival—the hand, the “teacher and agent of the brain.” While the rest of the body dwindles, she imagines, the hand will grow ever larger through constant, unceasing activity.

We can certainly laugh at such “imaginotions,” and yet the Martians obviously suppressed their animal side to increase their intelligence. A gradual development of brain and hands (the latter becoming tentacles) at the expense of the rest of their bodies altered their physiology permanently; their brains grew ever larger (in effect, they became talking heads, much like politicians), without any of the emotional baggage that burdens most human beings (lawyers being the lone exception).

Doktor Jarmann has also established, in his stirring essay, “De Exo-Physiologia Parvula Martianorum” (published in Zeitschrift der Pikkoloflöte-Musik) that the bacteria and viruses that have caused so much havoc on our planet probably don’t exist on Mars, or (more likely) were eradicated by Martian science millennia ago. The aliens apparently never experience disease, dying eventually of old age, although the outside limit of that age is unknown. Dr. Terrot Callander has suggested that the Martians never stop growing throughout their lifetimes, and that the invasion fleet may have consisted only of juveniles bred for that purpose. Graeny Michaels takes issue with that notion, however, believing that the aliens were fully aware of what they were doing, most of the time.

Finally, there’s the curious question of the red weed.

Vegetation on Mars, like the soil from which it is nurtured, displays a vivid, blood-red tinge to its leaves, stems, and blossoms. None of the rovers that we’ve sent to the Red Planet have noticed these plants, so it’s likely that they’ve long since retreated from the harsh conditions of the surface, particularly at the equator, and now exist only in specially cultivated patches underground, or possibly in very small scattered tufts somewhere near the Martian poles, where water ice is known to exist. At any rate, the seeds that the aliens brought with them to Earth only gave rise to red-hued growths.

The plant known popularly as the red weed, however, was the only one to gain widespread footing in terrestrial soil. The red creeper, a different species altogether, appeared mostly in wooded areas, with very few people actually observing it. The red-faced groper only grew in very small patches in swampy areas, although it seemed to flourish in the Sacramento climate, and was particularly attracted to human females. The crimson tide was a kind of kelp that infested the California coast for awhile. The ruddy root grew mostly underground; hence, it was mostly never found, except in fine restaurants. The pink pincushion was a type of nettle with a sheen of prickly metal. The carmine copperhead has only recently been identified as peculiar to the Mojave Desert. Undoubtedly, more such plants will be discovered as time goes on, although none of them seems to have adapted very well to the conditions on our world.

For a time the red weed flourished astonishingly well wherever there was water or even the hint of dampness. It’d spread up the sides of our pit by the third or fourth day of our imprisonment, and its cactus-like branches soon formed a rosy fringe to the edges of our triangular window on the world. Afterwards, I found it scattered all throughout the country, especially around fresh-water springs and rivers and ditches—and at the edges of the ocean.

Why did the Martians seed the Earth? This is one of the great unsolved mysteries of the aliens, because they made no obvious effort to consume the weed. Perhaps the plants produced nutrients the Martians required, or maybe the crimson growth was intended as food for other alien animals that would have been brought to our world at some later date. Some writers, especially Dulcimer de Nardo, have suggested that the Martians found the reddish hue esthetically pleasing. No one really knows for sure.

Their eyes had a visual range not unlike our own, except that, according to Doctor Lando Pfischmonger, the colors dark blue and violet would have seemed black to them. Biologists have postulated that they communicated with each other through their hooting sounds and gross gesticulations (indeed, this was first asserted in the above-mentioned People article, “I Survived the Martians,” by Marco Polo Malletoni). However, no human who survived the war saw as much of the Martians as I did. I observed them from close range over a long period of time. I’ve seen four, five, even six of the creatures sluggishly performing the most elaborately complicated operations together without making either a sound or obvious gesture to each other. Their peculiar hoot-hoot noise invariably preceded their feeding and accompanied certain other actions, but it had no specific tone; this was, I believe, not actually a signal, but just noise that accompanied certain set activities. Maybe in the distant past, the Martians communicated verbally, but I doubt that’s been true for a very long time.

I have a certain knowledge of basic psychology, and I’m absolutely convinced from my observations that the Martians communicated telepathically with each other (however, Dr. Roweena Warner believes that telepathic communication between Earth and the home world would have required more energy than the Martians could have possibly generated—there’s really no way of proving or disproving this notion). I never believed in telepathy before, but it’s the only explanation that seems to fit the facts.

The Martians wore no clothing. Their concept of ornament was necessarily different from ours. They seemed less sensitive to changes of temperature than we are. They were sluggish in our atmosphere, but that never stopped them from attaining their goals. Their extensive use of artificial limbs and implements made them individually more powerful than any single human being, enabling them to live and move on a planet where the force of gravity would have otherwise rendered them completely ineffectual.

That’s not to say, of course, the Martians were all-knowing or invincible. Their largest machines were the giant tripods, and this three-in-one pattern can been seen in many of their constructions. They made very little use of pivots. Their machines employed a complicated system of sliding parts moving over very small but beautifully curved friction bearings, the longer levers being activated by a sort of sham musculature of disks housed in elastic sheaths; these disks were activated by an electrical current. Thus, they were able to achieve a fluid, almost animal-like motion in their mechanical creations. They also used biological components to help control and manipulate their machines, but since few of these survived the war intact, we have very little idea of how they actually worked.

Such quasi-muscles helped power the crab-like handling-machine which I’d observed unpacking the spaceship. That’s why the machine seemed almost more alive than the Martian directing it. By comparison, the aliens themselves appeared ineffectual, lying there panting in the glaring sunlight, stirring their feeble tentacles right and left, sopping up warmth, and thrashing about limply after their long journey across space. One of them was bathing itself in a pool of water to one side of the pit, and presently I saw it change places with another. I wondered then if the creatures were originally aquatic in nature.

While I was observing these sluggish movements, the minister tugged my arm, trying to pull me back so she could take her turn. The slit only permitted one of us to peer outside at a time, so I had to relinquish my entertainment while she exercised that privilege for a few hours.

When I resumed my post, the busy little handling-machine had already assembled several pieces of the apparatus it had taken from the ship, molding them into a shape like its own. To the left the digger came into view, emitting jets of green vapor and working its way ’round and ’round the pit, excavating and banking the dirt in a methodical series of actions designed to enlarge the Martians’ living quarters. This is what’d caused the regular beating noise and the rhythmic shocks that had kept our ruinous refuge aquiver all through the night. It piped and whistled to itself almost cheerfully as it worked and worked and worked, endlessly making its rounds. So far as I could tell, the thing operated completely on its own.

I observed the invaders first-hand during those long days of captivity, finding them utterly fascinating. Their motives, their intentions, their basic thoughts all still seem a marvel to me.

If only I’d found some way to communicate with the enemy.

If only I’d found some way to communicate with the minister.