The Martian War

CHAPTER ELEVEN


ADRIFT IN SPACE

As the nitroglycerin explosion rang through the laboratory, the shock wave slammed the hatch shut on the cavorite sphere, and Wells tumbled into Jane and Professor Huxley amongst the boxes, crates, and papers.

The interior of the vessel was entirely dark, thanks to the closed blinds that covered the transparent walls. There was not a glimmer of light, no lessening of the intense shadows. No outside sound, though fire and fury must be all around them. His stomach gave a queasy lurch, and he had the oddest sensation of gentle, floating movement. He wished they could find a miner’s light amongst the supplies the madman Griffin had packed aboard.

“Jane? Are you all right?” Wells scrambled about, bumping elbows, nearly sticking his left thumb in Huxley’s eye. “Sorry, Professor.”

The older man’s gruff voice came from within inches of his ear. “She’s behind me, Wells. We both appear to be intact.”

“You can inspect me later, H.G. Do you think it’s safe to go outside yet?”

In the darkness, Huxley made a skeptical noise. “There may still be fire and smoke from the concussion. Nevertheless, I’m pleased to learn, albeit accidentally, that Cavor’s armor is exceptionally effective. Otherwise we should all have been blasted to smithereens.”

“Oh, Dr. Cavor!” Jane cried. “He was right in the middle of the explosion.”

“So was Griffin,” Huxley said, his voice grim. “I do hope he didn’t escape.”

“With all this tumbling, I can’t seem to find the hatch.” Wells’s hand slapped the inner wall, striking one of the pulldown blinds that covered a window. “Here, at least I’ll let in some light.” He fumbled with the catch on the bottom of the metal blind and slid it up to expose the incomprehensible scene outside.

The view made no sense: a tumult of darkness and starlight, glowing fires and billowing orange-white smoke—all receding rapidly. The armored sphere had hurtled out of the shattered laboratory like a cannonball, blasted upward by the explosion of Griffin’s bomb!

Joining Wells at the window, Huxley looked down upon the burning wreckage of the Institute. The explosion had started a fire, and the sphere’s violent ascent had knocked a hole in the roof. Many of the windows all along the building had shattered. Lights were lit; people scurried around.

Though Wells felt no change in his concept of up or down, he became disoriented again. As the view changed to a bottomless pit of open night sky studded with misty clouds, he realized that the sphere was spinning, rolling about like a great ball as it continued to rise high into the air.

“Amazing!” Huxley exclaimed. “The outer shell of the sphere is now opaque to gravity! The explosion in the laboratory must have unexpectedly provided the necessary impulse to the inert cavorite, changing its material structure.”

“But how do we get down again?” Jane asked.

“Apart from falling,” Wells added.

“Young lady, I do not even understand how we got up. If this were an artillery projectile, we would reach the peak of a parabolic trajectory and descend to the ground. But this vessel is not propelled by acceleration like a bullet. We simply appear to be … independent of the Earth’s gravity, and presumably flying away from its surface at a tangent.”

Trapped inside the cluttered sphere, they continued skyward at such a terrific rate that the main building of the Institute and the sprawling grounds were far, far below by the next time they tumbled round to get a view of the ground again. The metropolitan landscape of London extended below, thoroughfares and parks lit by tiny fireflies of street lamps. Wells made out the sultry curve of the Thames River, the unmistakable Tower of London, Buckingham Palace, Hyde Park. As the sphere continued its rotation, Wells once again saw only a bottomless pit of night sky studded with misty clouds. “This is making me dizzy.”

Soon, they tore through a clump of cloud that left sparkles of moisture on the cavorite segments. The once-milky material had become perfectly clear now, since the shock-catalyzed phase change.

Working other rolling blinds, Wells and Jane exposed more of the cavorite windows and noted that the direction of their rolling movement changed each time they exposed one. By carefully selecting portholes on opposite sides of the sphere, they managed to stabilize their tumbling, and the seesaw of gravity evened them into a gentle, constant upward movement. With detached fascination, Huxley made notes as he pondered the views.

When the armored sphere finally rose above all impediments of Earth’s atmosphere, they saw the full glory of the stars. The brilliant Moon shone more glorious and distinct than Wells had ever seen it from the ground. After more than an hour, their ascent had not noticeably slowed. Eventually they saw the curvature of the Earth itself, and a thin frosting of atmosphere.

“Ah, it seems we are leaving our Earth behind,” Huxley announced.

Ever practical, Jane began looking through the supplies that Griffin had stored aboard the vessel. The sphere contained crates of food, bottled water, wine, and beer, as well as hard biscuits and fruit, such as might be packed as provisions aboard a seafaring craft.

Cavor, with his engineering mind set, had not gone out of his way to provide comfort and amenities. Small cushions tucked against the wall of the floating sphere might have been intended as comfortable seats—but only by a scientist who would never be required to sit in them. An empty covered tureen, now floating toward the sphere’s ceiling, might have been meant as a portable privy.

But at least Wells was with Jane, and little else mattered.

Huxley conducted a brief, efficient inventory of the jumbled stockpile. “Since we don’t know how long our journey might be, it’s a good thing that rogue saw fit to leave us with provisions. I suggest we take inventory and portion out a logical distribution.”

Wells asked, “Do you think the cavorite will … wear off, Professor?”

“Although I have read all the reports Cavor bothered to write—he was not very conscientious about writing up his research, I’m afraid—I do not claim to understand the physical mechanisms by which this unusual alloy functions.”

As they rummaged through the boxes, setting aside the perishables, Jane found six stoppered and sealed test tubes casually stored among a set of engineering drawings. “Look, H.G.! The vials of cholera bacillus that Griffin stole from the medical research laboratory.”

Wells paled. Huxley gently took the test tubes from Jane’s slender hand. “I cannot believe my supposed colleague would have stooped to such a horrible method of warfare.” With cotton wadding and strips of cloth, he carefully padded and wrapped the vials of deadly cholera germs. “We must make certain these are not damaged in any accident.”

“Maybe we should just … open the hatch and throw them out,” Jane suggested.

Huxley said, “My dear lady, we are out in space, beyond the atmosphere of Earth.”

Jane caught her breath in alarm. “Of course! If we were to open the hatch, all our air would escape. We would suffocate.”

Wells put his arm around her. “I’d rather continue breathing for at least a while longer.”

Though they hurtled far from their planetary home, the three explorers were safe enough within the armored vessel. Despite the obvious peril and uncertainty of their situation, the novelty soon wore thin. After several hours, they actually began to grow bored.

“I suppose this is not unlike your time on the H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Professor?” Wells asked. He and Jane huddled to share warmth and comfort.

Huxley talked to while away the time. “No, Mr. Wells, this is unlike any trip I have ever experienced. When I was but twenty-one, I secured a post on the Rattlesnake as their assistant surgeon. Though I had few qualifications for the job, it sounded exciting, and I wanted to be away from England. I spent the next four years sailing in the southern seas. The Rattlesnake was a scientific ship on a mission of exploration but, ah, it was a cockroach-ridden frigate. At least there were many fascinating things to see.”

The old professor smiled wistfully. “I collected marine specimens over the side of the ship by using a wire-mesh meat safe as a dredge. I acquired fishes, aquatic plants, and small cephalopods. I wrote detailed summaries of my discoveries, which I posted home to England from each port. My papers were accepted by the prestigious journals of the Royal Institution and the Royal Society. They never guessed how young I was.”

“I read many of those papers, Professor,” Wells said. He had showed some of them to Jane as well, who was always fascinated with new specimens and the breadth of diversity of life on Earth. “When I was your student, I considered you quite a role model.”

Huxley smiled with pleasure. “Ah, and look where it has gotten you, Wells. The three of us hurled far from Earth— farther, I daresay, than any human has ever gone before.”

Jane sighed. “Out here in the space between planets, there aren’t very many specimens for us to study. Then again, I didn’t bring along my guidebooks or my opera glasses.”

“Motionless tedium is the cruelest torture for the educated mind,” Wells said. “Lesser animals, and even men without curiosity, can stare at the grass for hours. My own father was perfectly content to lounge outside his china shop, simply watching the road, greeting passers-by, but rarely stirring himself to perform any sort of work. Though the towns on the outskirts of London did well with the growth of industry, my father never managed to make a success of his shop. I don’t believe he cared. He would rather have been playing cricket.”

Jane snuggled closer to him in sympathy. “He sounds quite different from you, H.G.”

“Oh, he was a good-hearted man, everyone’s friend—but singularly without ambition. My mother was never happy with him. Even as a child I could sense the strain between them. Still, he took me to watch him play cricket sometimes. He was very good at it, you know, and—by a fortunate accident—one of those cricket matches made me into the man I am now.”

“A cricket match?” Huxley asked. “I fail to see the connection.”

“While my father played, one of his friends from the local pub liked to wrestle with me. I was only seven, and I found it deliriously entertaining. The man would toss me into the air, catch me, then toss me again. One time he missed—and down I fell onto a wooden tent stake, which promptly shattered my leg bone.”

Jane stroked his hair. “It must have been terrible, H.G.”

“On the contrary, my dear, it was a miracle. I had to spend the next several weeks bedridden, waiting for the bone to knit. And that is when I discovered books. My father felt extremely guilty—I’m sure my mother had something to do with that. He borrowed books of all kinds from the Bromley Institute Library: science, astronomy, and a wonderful natural history complete with illustrations. I simply couldn’t get enough. That experience opened my mind, gave me new worlds to explore, new ideas to digest.”

Jane slumped against the curved, cool wall of cavorite with a frustrated sigh. “If only we had books here to occupy us.”

By the bright moonlight streaming through the exposed portholes, Huxley reached into his striped lounging robe and produced the thick volume he’d been reading when Wells and Jane fetched him from his room. “Ah. We do have Dr. Moreau’s journal.”