The doings of the flagship had been closely watched throughout the squadron. The effect of its blow had been evident to all, and a moment later we saw, on some of the nearer ships, men dressed in their air suits, appearing upon the deck, swinging their arms and sending forth soundless cheers into empty s.p.a.ce.
The stroke that we had dealt was taken by several of the electrical ships as a signal for a common a.s.sault, and we saw two of the Martians fall beside the ruins of their engine, their heads having been blown from their bodies.
"Signal them to stop firing," commanded Mr. Edison. "We have got them down, and we are not going to murder them without necessity."
"Besides," he added, "I want to capture some of them alive."
The signal was given as he had ordered. The flagship then alone dropped slowly toward the place on the asteroid where the prostrate Martians were.
As we got near them a terrible scene unfolded itself to our eyes. There had evidentially been not more than a half dozen of the monsters in the beginning. Two of these were stretched headless upon the ground. Three others had suffered horrible injuries where the invisible vibratory beams from the disintegrators had grazed them, and they could not long survive. One only remained apparently uninjured.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _As we got near them a terrible scene unfolded itself.
Two of the Martians were stretched headless upon the ground. Three others had suffered horrible injuries, and only one remained apparently unhurt._]
It is impossible for me to describe the appearance of this creature in terms that would be readily understood. Was he like a man? Yes and no.
He possessed many human characteristics, but they were exaggerated and monstrous in scale and in detail. His head was of enormous size, and his huge projecting eyes gleamed with a strange fire of intelligence. His face was like a caricature, but not one to make the beholder laugh.
Drawing himself up, he towered to a height of at least fifteen feet.
But let the reader not suppose from this inadequate description that the Martians stirred in the beholder precisely the sensation that would be caused by the sight of a gorilla, or other repulsive inhabitant of our terrestrial jungles, suddenly confronting him in its native wilds.
With all his horrible characteristics, and all his suggestions of beast and monster, nevertheless the Martian produced the impression of being a person and not a mere animal.
I have already referred to the enormous size of his head, and to the fact that his countenance bore considerable resemblance to that of a man. There was something in his face that sent a shiver through the soul of the beholder. One could feel in looking upon it that here was intellect, intelligence developed to the highest degree, but in the direction of evil instead of good.
The sensations of one who had stood face to face with Satan, when he was driven from the battlements of heaven by the swords of his fellow archangels, and had beheld him transformed from Lucifer, the Son of the Morning, into the Prince of Night and h.e.l.l, might not have been unlike those which we now experienced as we gazed upon this dreadful personage, who seemed to combine the intellectual powers of a man, raised to their highest pitch, with some of the physical features of a beast, and all the moral depravity of a fiend.
The appearance of the Martian was indeed so threatening and repellent that we paused at the height of fifty feet above the ground, hesitating to approach nearer. A grin of rage and hate overspread his face. If he had been a man I should say he shook his fist at us. What he did was to express in even more telling pantomime his hatred and defiance, and his determination to grind us to shreds if he could once get us within his clutches.
Mr. Edison and I still stood upon the deck of the ship, where several others had gathered around us. The atmosphere of the little asteroid was so rare that it practically amounted to nothing, and we could not possibly have survived if we had not continued to wear our air tight suits. How the Martians contrived to live here was a mystery to us. It was another of their secrets which we were yet to learn.
Mr. Edison retained his disintegrator in his hand.
"Kill him," said someone. "He is too horrible to live."
"If we do not kill him we shall never be able to land upon the asteroid," said another.
"No," said Mr. Edison. "I shall not kill him. We have got another use for him. Tom," he continued, turning to one of his a.s.sistants, whom he had brought from his laboratory, "bring me the anaesthetic."
This was something entirely new to nearly all the members of the expedition. Mr. Edison, however, had confided to me before we left the earth the fact that he had invented a little instrument by means of which a bubble, strongly charged with a powerful anaesthetic agent, could be driven to a considerable distance into the face of an enemy, where exploding without other damage, it would instantly put him to sleep.
When Tom had placed the instrument in his hands Mr. Edison ordered the electrical ship to forge slightly ahead and drop a little lower toward the Martian, who, with watchful eyes and threatening gestures, noted our approach in the att.i.tude of a wild beast on the spring. Suddenly Mr.
Edison discharged from the instrument in his hand a little gaseous globe, which glittered like a ball of tangled rainbows in the sunshine, and darted with astonishing velocity straight into the upturned face of the Martian. It burst as it touched and the monster fell back senseless upon the ground.
"You have killed him!" exclaimed all.
"No," said Mr. Edison. "He is not dead, only asleep. Now we shall drop down and bind him tight before he can awake."
When we came to bind our prisoner with strong ropes we were more than ever impressed with his gigantic stature and strength. Evidentially in single combat with equal weapons he would have been a match for twenty of us.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _"When we came to bind our prisoner with strong ropes we were more than ever impressed with his gigantic stature and strength.
He might have been a match for twenty of us."_]
All that I had read of giants had failed to produce upon my mind the impression of enormous size and tremendous physical energy which the sleeping body of this immense Martian produced. He had fallen on his back, and was in a most profound slumber. All his features were relaxed, and yet even in that condition there was a devilishness about him that made the beholders instinctively shudder.
So powerful was the effect of the anaesthetic which Mr. Edison had discharged into his face that he remained perfectly unconscious while we turned him half over in order the more securely to bind his muscular limbs.
In the meantime the other electrical ships approached, and several of them made a landing upon the asteroid. Everybody was eager to see this wonderful little world, which, as I have already remarked, was only five miles in diameter.
Several of us from the flagship started out hastily to explore the miniature planet. And now our attention was recalled to an intensely interesting phenomenon which had engaged our thoughts not only when we were upon the moon, but during our flight through s.p.a.ce. This was the almost entire absence of weight.
On the moon, where the force of gravitation is one-sixths as great as upon the earth, we had found ourselves astonishingly light. Five-sixths of our own weight, and of the weight of the air-tight suits in which we were encased, had magically dropped from us. It was therefore comparatively easy for us, enc.u.mbered, as we were, to make our way about on the moon.
But when we were far from both the earth and the moon, the loss of weight was more astonishing still--not astonishing because we had not known that it would be so, but nevertheless a surprising phenomenon in contrast with our lifelong experience on the earth.
In open s.p.a.ce we were practically without weight. Only the ma.s.s of the electrical car in which we were enclosed attracted us, and inside that we could place ourselves in any position without falling. We could float in the air. There was no up and no down, no top and no bottom for us.
Stepping outside the car, it would have been easy for us to spring away from it and leave it forever.
One of the most startling experiences that I have ever had was one day when we were navigating s.p.a.ce about half way between the earth and Mars.
I had stepped outside the car with Lord Kelvin, both of us, of course, wearing our air-tight suits. We were perfectly well aware what would be the consequence of detaching ourselves from the car as we moved along.
We should still retain the forward motion of the car, and of course accompany it in its flight. There would be no falling one way or the other. The car would have a tendency to draw us back again by its attraction, but this tendency would be very slight, and practically inappreciable at a distance.
"I am going to step off," I suddenly said to Lord Kelvin. "Of course I shall keep right along with the car, and step aboard again when I am ready."
"Quite right on general principles, young man," replied the great savant, "but beware in what manner you step off. Remember, if you give your body an impulse sufficient to carry it away from the car to any considerable distance, you will be unable to get back again, unless we can catch you with a boathook or a fishline. Out there in empty s.p.a.ce you will have nothing to kick against, and you will be unable to propel yourself in the direction of the car, and its attraction is so feeble that we should probably arrive at Mars before it had drawn you back again."
All this was, of course, perfectly self-evident, yet I believe that but for the warning words of Lord Kelvin I should have been rash enough to step out into empty s.p.a.ce, with sufficient force to have separated myself hopelessly from the electrical ship.
As it was, I took good care to retain a hold upon a projecting portion of the car. Occasionally cautiously releasing my grip, I experienced for a few minutes the delicious, indescribable pleasure of being a little planet swinging through s.p.a.ce, with nothing to hold me up and nothing to interfere with my motion.
Mr. Edison, happening to come upon the deck of the ship at this time, and seeing what we were about at once said:
"I must provide against this danger. If I do not, there is a chance that we shall arrive at Mars with the ships half empty and the crews floating helplessly around us."
Mr. Edison"s way of guarding against the danger was by contriving a little apparatus, modeled after that which was the governing force of the electrical ships themselves, and which, being enclosed in the air-tight suits, enabled their wearers to manipulate the electrical charge upon them in such a way that they could make excursions from the cars into open s.p.a.ce like steam launches from a ship, going and returning at their will.
These little machines being rapidly manufactured, for Mr. Edison had a miniature laboratory aboard, were distributed about the squadron, and henceforth we had the pleasure of paying and receiving visits among the various members of the fleet.
But to return from this digression to our experience of the asteroid.
The latter being a body of some ma.s.s was, of course, able to impart to us a measurable degree of weight. Being five miles in diameter, on the a.s.sumption that its mean density was the same as that of the earth, the weight of bodies on its surface should have borne the same ratio to their weight upon the earth that the radius of the asteroid bore to the radius of the earth; in other words, as 1 to 1,600.
Having made this mental calculation, I knew that my weight, being 150 pounds on the earth, should on this asteroid be an ounce and a half.
Curious to see whether fact would bear out theory, I had myself weighed with a spring balance. Mr. Edison, Lord Kelvin and the other distinguished scientists stood by watching the operation with great interest.
To our complete surprise, my weight instead of coming out an ounce and a half, as it should have done, on the supposition that the mean density of the asteroid resembled that of the earth--a very liberal supposition on the side of the asteroid, by the way--actually came out five ounces and a quarter!
"What in the world makes me so heavy?" I asked.