mankind. It may be that across the immensity of space the Martians have
watched the fate of these pioneers of theirs and learned their lesson,
and that on the planet Venus they have found a securer settlement. Be
that as it may, for many years yet there will certainly be no
relaxation of the eager scrutiny of the Martian disk, and those fiery
darts of the sky, the shooting stars, will bring with them as they fall
an unavoidable apprehension to all the sons of men.
The broadening of men s views that has resulted can scarcely be
exaggerated. Before the cylinder fell there was a general persuasion
that through all the deep of space no life existed beyond the petty
surface of our minute sphere. Now we see further. If the Martians can
reach Venus, there is no reason to suppose that the thing is impossible
for men, and when the slow cooling of the sun makes this earth
uninhabitable, as at last it must do, it may be that the thread of life
that has begun here will have streamed out and caught our sister planet
within its toils.
Dim and wonderful is the vision I have conjured up in my mind of life
spreading slowly from this little seed bed of the solar system
throughout the inanimate vastness of sidereal space. But that is a
remote dream. It may be, on the other hand, that the destruction of the
Martians is only a reprieve. To them, and not to us, perhaps, is the
future ordained.
I must confess the stress and danger of the time have left an abiding
sense of doubt and insecurity in my mind. I sit in my study writing by
lamplight, and suddenly I see again the healing valley below set with
writhing flames, and feel the house behind and about me empty and
desolate. I go out into the Byfleet Road, and vehicles pass me, a
butcher boy in a cart, a cabful of visitors, a workman on a bicycle,
children going to school, and suddenly they become vague and unreal,
and I hurry again with the artilleryman through the hot, brooding
silence. Of a night I see the black powder darkening the silent
streets, and the contorted bodies shrouded in that layer; they rise
upon me tattered and dog-bitten. They gibber and grow fiercer, paler,
uglier, mad distortions of humanity at last, and I wake, cold and
wretched, in the darkness of the night.
I go to London and see the busy multitudes in Fleet Street and the
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