The War of the Worlds / Война миров. Уровень 2

The black and silent observatory, the lantern in the corner, the clockwork of the telescope, the little slit in the roof. Ogilvy moved about, invisible but audible. I looked through the telescope and saw a circle of deep blue and the little round planet which was swimming in the field. It seemed such a little thing, so bright and small and still, faintly marked with transverse stripes. It was very little and silvery warm – a pin’s head of light!

The planet grew larger and smaller, but that was simply that my eye was tired.

Forty millions of miles it was from us – more than forty millions of miles of void.

Near the planet, I remember, were three faint points of light, three stars, and all around it was the unfathomable darkness of empty space.

And invisible to me because it was so remote and small, came the Thing they were sending us. That Thing was bringing much struggle and calamity and death to the earth.

That night, too, there was another jetting out of gas[3 - jetting out of gas – взрыв газа] from the distant planet.

I saw it. A reddish flash at the edge, just as the chronometer struck midnight. I told Ogilvy and he took my place. The night was warm and I was thirsty. I went to the little table where the siphon stood, while Ogilvy exclaimed. He saw the streamer of gas that came out towards us.

That night another invisible missile started on its way to the earth from Mars, almost twenty-four hours after the first one. I remember how I sat on the table there in the blackness.

I did not suspect the meaning of the gleam. We lit the lantern and walked over to Ogilvy’s house. Down below in the darkness were Ottershaw and Chertsey and all their hundreds of people. They were sleeping in peace.

Ogilvy was full of speculation that night about the condition of Mars. He scoffed at the vulgar idea of their signalling us. His idea was that meteorites were falling in a shower upon the planet, or that a huge volcanic explosion was in progress. He did not believe that life had evolved in the same way on both planets.

The daily papers wrote about volcanoes upon Mars. But those missiles from Mars drew earthward.

Chapter 2 The Falling Star

Then came the night of the first falling star. We saw it early in the morning, it was rushing over Winchester eastward, a line of flame high in the atmosphere.

I was at home at that hour. I was writing in my study. Poor Ogilvy rose very early. He wanted to find the meteorite.