Read the chapter
The War of the Worlds
Chapter 2. THE FALLING STAR
Then came the night of the first falling star.
It was seen early in the morning, rushing over Winchester eastward, a line of flame high in the sky.
Hundreds must have seen it and thought it was an ordinary falling star.
Albin described it as leaving a greenish trail behind it that glowed for some seconds.
Denning, our greatest expert on meteorites, said that the height of its first appearance was about ninety or one hundred miles.
It seemed to him that it fell to earth about one hundred miles east of him.
I was at home at that hour and writing in my study.
Although my French windows faced Ottershaw and the blind was up, I loved then to look at the sky, yet I saw nothing.
Yet this strangest of all things that ever came to earth from outer space must have fallen while I was sitting there.
It would have been visible to me if I had only looked up as it passed.
Some of those who saw its flight say it travelled with a hissing sound.
I myself heard nothing of that, Many people in Berkshire, Surrey, and Middlesex must have seen the fall of it.
At most, they thought that another meteorite had landed.
No one seems to have troubled to look for the fallen mass that night.
Poor Ogilvy had seen the shooting star.
He was sure that a meteorite lay on the common between Horsell, Ottershaw, and Woking.
He rose early to find it, Find it he did, soon after dawn, and not far from the sand-pits.
An enormous hole had been made by the impact of the projectile.
The sand and gravel had been thrown violently in every direction over the heath, forming piles visible a mile and a half away.
The heather was on fire eastward, and a thin blue smoke rose against the dawn.
The Thing itself lay almost completely buried in sand, among the scattered pieces of a fir tree it had broken to pieces in its fall.
The uncovered part looked like a huge cylinder.
It was covered with a thick scaly brown crust that softened its outline.
It had a diameter of about thirty yards.
He approached the mass, surprised at its size and even more at its shape, since most meteorites are more or less round.
However, it was still so hot from its flight through the air that he couldn't get close.
A stirring noise inside the cylinder he thought was caused by the uneven cooling of its surface.
At that time, it hadn't occurred to him that it might be hollow.
He stood at the edge of the pit that the Thing had made for itself.
He stared at its strange appearance, astonished mainly by its unusual shape and colour.
Even then, he dimly saw some signs of design in its arrival.
The early morning was wonderfully still, the sun, just clearing the pine trees towards Weybridge, was already warm.
He didn't remember hearing any birds that morning.
There was certainly no breeze, the only sounds were the faint movements from inside the cindery cylinder.
He was all alone on the common.
Then he noticed that grey clinker, the ashy crust covering the meteorite, was falling off the circular edge.
It was dropping off in flakes and raining down upon the sand.
A large piece suddenly came off and fell with a sharp noise that made his heart jump.
For a minute he hardly understood what this meant.
Although the heat was extreme, he climbed down into the pit close to the bulk to see the Thing more clearly.
He thought even then that the cooling of the body might explain this.
But what disturbed that idea was the fact that the ash was falling only from the end of the cylinder.
And then he saw that, very slowly, the circular top of the cylinder was turning on its body.
It moved so slowly that he noticed it only after some time.
He saw a black mark that had been near him five minutes before now at the other side of the edge.
Even then he hardly understood what this meant, until he heard a muffled grinding sound and saw the black mark jerk forward an inch or so.
Then the thing came to him in a flash.
The cylinder was artificial, hollow, with an end that screwed out.
Something inside the cylinder was unscrewing the top.
"Good heavens!" said Ogilvy.
"There's a man in it, men in it! Half roasted to death! Trying to escape!"
At once, with a quick mental leap, he connected the Thing with the flash upon Mars.
The thought of the trapped creature was so terrible to him that he forgot the heat and went forward to the cylinder to help turn it.
But luckily the dull heat stopped him before he could burn his hands on the still-glowing metal.
He stood there unsure for a moment.
Then he turned, climbed out of the pit, and set off running wildly into Woking.
The time then must have been somewhere about six o'clock.
He met a wagon driver and tried to make him understand.
But the story he told and his appearance were so wild, his hat had fallen off in the pit, that the man simply drove on.
He was equally unsuccessful with the barman who was just unlocking the doors of the pub by Horsell Bridge.
The man thought he was a madman on the loose and tried to shut him into the bar room.
That calmed him down a little, and he sat for a moment catching his breath.
When he saw Henderson, the London journalist, in his garden, he called over the fence and made himself understood.
"Henderson," he called, "you saw that shooting star last night?"
"Well?" said Henderson.
"It's out on Horsell Common now."
"Good Lord!" said Henderson.
"Fallen meteorite! That's good."
"But it's something more than a meteorite. It's a cylinder, an artificial cylinder, man! And there's something inside."
Henderson stood up with his spade in his hand.
"What's that?" he said.
He was deaf in one ear, a hearing defect that made him lean forward.
Ogilvy told him all that he had seen.
Henderson took a minute or so to understand it.
Then he dropped his spade, grabbed his jacket, and came out into the road.
The two men hurried back at once to the common.
They found the cylinder still lying in the same position.
But now the sounds inside had stopped.
A thin circle of bright metal showed between the top and the body of the cylinder.
Air was either entering or escaping at the rim with a thin, sizzling sound.
They listened, they knocked on the scaly burnt metal with a stick.
They got no response, they both decided that the man or men inside must be unconscious or dead.
Of course the two were quite unable to do anything.
They shouted words of comfort and promises.
Then they went back to the town again to get help.
You can imagine them covered with sand.
They were excited and messy, running up the little street in the bright sunlight.
The shop people were taking down their shutters.
People were opening their bedroom windows, Henderson went into the railway station at once, in order to telegraph the news to London.
The newspaper articles had prepared people's minds for the idea.
By eight o'clock a number of boys and unemployed men had already started for the common to see the "dead men from Mars."
That was the form the story took.
I heard of it first from my newspaper boy about a quarter to nine when I went out to get my Daily Chronicle.
I was naturally startled, I lost no time in going out and across the Ottershaw bridge to the sand-pits.