Edison's Conquest of Mars
by
Garrett P. Serviss
1898
Chapter I. II. III. IV. V. VI. VII. VIII. IX. X. XI. XII. XIII. XIV. XV. XVI. XVII. XVIII.
Chapter I.
It is impossible that the stupendous events which followed the disastrousinvasion of the earth by the Martians should go without record, andcircumstances having placed the facts at my disposal, I deem it a duty,both to posterity and to those who were witnesses of and participantsin the avenging counterstroke that the earth dealt back at its ruthlessenemy in the heavens, to write down the story in a connected form.
The Martians had nearly all perished, not through our puny efforts, butin consequence of disease, and the few survivors fled in one of theirprojectile cars, inflicting their cruelest blow in the act of departure.
Their Mysterious Explosive.
They possessed a mysterious explosive, of unimaginable puissance, withwhose aid they set their car in motion for Mars from a point in BergenCounty, N. J., just back of the Palisades.
The force of the explosion may be imagined when it is recollected thatthey had to give the car a velocity of more than seven miles per secondin order to overcome the attraction of the earth and the resistance ofthe atmosphere.
The shock destroyed all of New York that had not already fallen a prey,and all the buildings yet standing in the surrounding towns and citiesfell in one far-circling ruin.
The Palisades tumbled in vast sheets, starting a tidal wave in the Hudsonthat drowned the opposite shore.
Thousands of Victims.
The victims of this ferocious explosion were numbered by tens ofthousands, and the shock, transmitted through the rocky frame of theglobe, was recorded by seismographic pendulums in England and on theContinent of Europe.
The terrible results achieved by the invaders had produced everywhere amingled feeling of consternation and hopelessness. The devastation waswidespread. The death-dealing engines which the Martians had brought withthem had proved irresistible and the inhabitants of the earth possessednothing capable of contending against them. There had been no protectionfor the great cities; no protection even for the open country. Everythinghad gone down before the savage onslaught of those merciless invaders fromspace. Savage ruins covered the sites of many formerly flourishing townsand villages, and the broken walls of great cities stared at the heavenslike the exhumed skeletons of Pompeii. The awful agencies had extirpatedpastures and meadows and dried up the very springs of fertility in theearth where they had touched it. In some parts of the devastated landspestilence broke out; elsewhere there was famine. Despondency black asnight brooded over some of the fairest portions of the globe.
All Not Yet Destroyed.
Yet all had not been destroyed, because