The Martian War

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN


AN UNFORTUNATE DISCOVERY


FROM THE JOURNAL OF DR. MOREAU

With problematic expediency, A.E. Douglass returned from Massachusetts. We had hoped he would tarry for many weeks inspecting the great lenses for the observatory’s largest refractor. Now we had to deal with the assistant’s irritating curiosity again.

“Old Mr. Clark and his sons are doing an admirable job. However, they work best—and faster—without meddlesome observers like myself.” Douglass pushed his glasses up on his nose, as if to gather courage. “Since you insisted that the telescope be completed with all possible speed, Mr. Lowell, I decided you would want me to return here.”

Lowell’s moustache bristled as he took umbrage at the young astronomer’s attitude. “Please refresh yourself and unpack your things. I wish to speak with Dr. Moreau alone.”

I watched out the window of the main house as the thin young man hurried to unload his traveling trunk. Douglass scanned the observatory construction site to determine how well the work had progressed while he was gone. When he thought no one was looking, he furtively glanced at the shuttered outbuilding where we kept our Martian.

Lowell spoke in a cold and brittle voice. “I’m afraid that young man will cause trouble, Moreau.”

“Yes, he will. And it behooves us to deal with it in a manner of our own choosing, rather than let Douglass make a mess of things because of his persistent curiosity.” I poured myself a glass of brandy from a decanter. “It would have been best if he’d remained back east, but he is here now, and he knows we are hiding something from him—something of extreme importance.”

Lowell had turned his back to me and was staring out the window. “Then I will have to dispatch him on another errand.”

I shook my head. “If you send him away again, either he will not go, or he will quit. After which, he will certainly report your mystery to others.”

“All men talk.” Lowell declined the brandy I offered him. “All men pass rumors. There is enough gossip around here with the townspeople.”

“Think, Lowell! When a drunken man in a Flagstaff saloon speaks of ghosts and monsters, no one of importance listens to him. But what if Douglass talks to Pickering at Harvard, or to the officials at Yerkes Observatory? The news that you have a captive Martian hidden away would invite outright scorn for you.” I could see by his troubled expression that my words had an effect. “You are already viewed as eccentric in Boston society, but no one can fault you for your keen observations about Japan. You’ve earned a certain amount of respect, but that can vanish as swiftly as ice on a hot sidewalk if you are not careful. We cannot risk it, especially now that we are on the cusp of a great announcement.”

His voice was low, but no longer so antagonistic. “You obviously have some plan, Moreau.”

I came to stand beside him at the window. Douglass had retired to his rooms in the newly completed guest house. “You and I have had the Martian to ourselves here for a month. Three times that long, if you count from the date of the crash in the Sahara and the trip on the steamer. By dissecting the other specimens, I have learned much about alien physiology. We have made thorough inquiries about the Martian civilization. The time has come for us to announce our results—and, by God, receive the accolades we deserve from the scientific community!”

Thunderstruck, Lowell looked like a spoiled boy who did not wish to share his toys. “But … but we have so much more to learn from it.”

“There will be more to learn for the rest of our lives. Look at the size of its brain! However, even if we deliver our specimen to the London Zoo or the Smithsonian Institution, you and I will forever remain a dozen steps ahead of our competitors. No matter what else happens, we are the ones who rescued the Martian from the cylinder. I am the one who performed the grafting surgery and cured it from its near-fatal illness.”

I took a sip of brandy and sighed, trying to sound conciliatory. “This is not the time, the place, or the method by which I would have chosen to reveal our prize specimen, but that cannot be helped. Let us enlist Douglass and turn him into an ally instead of an enemy.”

Lowell’s shoulders sagged, and he looked defeated. “Very well.”

The young astronomer’s owlish eyes were wide as he stared at the crystal egg. “Truly astonishing!”

“This is only a fraction of the amazing things we have,” Lowell said.

I was a bit gruffer. “Now perhaps you will understand our initial reluctance to let anyone else in on our secret. Observe.” I turned the crystal egg so that the fly-eye facets across its exterior showed the fantastic images of Martian landscape. Douglass saw canals and rust-laden sands, massive construction projects, and the dying cities of a once-glorious civilization.

The young man’s face was so full of excitement I was afraid he might have some sort of breakdown. “This crystal egg is the most astounding new observing device I have ever seen! A simple viewing ellipsoid that one can hold in the palm of a hand, is superior to … to everything!”

Lowell had been so engrossed in the Martian specimen that he had not considered the straightforward implications of this subsidiary technology, how this crystal egg would revolutionize all of astronomy. Observing through the eyepiece of a telescope would become a quaint old custom.

But even as Douglass saw the possibilities of the observation device, I was more concerned about the suddenly inferior images in the crystal egg: the details were blurred and distances smeared. Perhaps a dust storm was sweeping across the Martian terrain. Or were the Martians—either our captive specimen or others on the red planet—directly distorting or blocking the signal? Were they trying to hide something from us?

Lowell sounded paternal instead of stern and testy. “Believe me when I say to you, Andrew, that this crystal egg is only one of the new things we will show you. But you must be patient. One cannot consume an enormous banquet all in one gulp.”

Douglass agreed—too quickly. To my everlasting shame, neither Lowell nor I saw fit to issue sterner warnings or keep a better eye on the young man. We should have known better. The worst thing one can possibly say to a man of obvious curiosity is to tell him to leave certain things alone.

Screams rang out in the dead of night, blood-curdling shrieks that woke me from a sound sleep. At first I thought I was having a nightmare about my unsuccessful vivisections, but as I sat up in the darkness listening to a breeze hiss through the pines on Mars Hill, the shrieks came again like the cry of a tortured soul … or a man being flayed alive.

I was up in a flash, throwing on trousers and a shirt and bursting out of the main house. Lowell appeared beside me, and we both ran into the night.

A final fading gurgle came from the shuttered outbuilding. Then we heard splintering wood and a scuffling, thudding sound as of something large and ungainly rushing about.

Afterward, piecing together the evidence, I determined that Douglass must have waited until we were fast asleep, then crept out of his room to approach the shed. Foiled by the padlock on the door, he had gone around the sides to peer through the high boarded-up windows. He had worked a small, flat pry-bar into the crack of the shutters, finally pulling the boards apart. He must have held the edge of the window, standing on tiptoe to squint into the gloom.

The Martian had grabbed Douglass’s arms and yanked him inside with superhuman force. The creature’s strength was surprisingly great—sufficient to splinter the wooden slats inward. The Martian had dragged Douglass into the darkened outbuilding. That was when the young astronomer had begun his terrified screams, but the alien was not finished with him.

When Lowell and I finally arrived at the scene, the shed door had been smashed outward, the padlock snapped. I was astounded to realize that the Martian must have been able to escape at any time, but had chosen not to. Until now.

Standing inside the empty chamber, we heard only a faint, quiet dripping. Nothing stirred. Lowell struck a match. The Martian was gone, as I had feared. So intent was I on the disappointing loss of our specimen that I did not immediately see the battered body of Andrew Douglass lying on the packed dirt floor. But Lowell did.

In the fading light of the match, I recognized that Douglass had been strangled. When its victim stopped struggling, the Martian must have ripped open the young astronomer’s jugular vein and torn a gouge in the young man’s chest, attempting to drain as much fresh blood as it could, even without hypodermic syringes.

But the sinister creature must have known we were coming: it had fled. Therefore, it understood that it had committed some sort of crime. I was shocked. “Why would it do this? It makes no sense. We fed it as much blood as it needed.”

Lowell stared in horror at the corpse of his assistant. “This wasn’t done for food. This was just to demonstrate … power, malice. The Martian has been toying with us, stringing us along. It saw its chance, and it struck—”

“Don’t be so quick to judge what an alien thinks, Percival.”

“Perhaps not. We thought we were establishing trust with it—and now poor Douglass is dead.”

I looked to the door. “Worse yet, the Martian is out there loose right now.”

As he let fall the limp hand of his assistant, Lowell looked as he had when we’d come upon the dead crewman aboard the transatlantic steamer. That was a crime we had managed to hide, however. We had protected the Martian … only to let it kill again.

Unlike a rude and penniless crewman, however, the murder of a young Harvard astronomer would not go unnoticed. Douglass’s connection to Percival Lowell and the Flagstaff Observatory was well known. My mind was already racing, wondering if we would be forced to announce prematurely our visitor from another world. If so, perhaps we could portray Douglass as a tragic victim of scientific curiosity … .

We heard the boom of a gunshot and angry shouts from the construction camp out among the pines. Some of the workmen must also have been roused by the screams. Unfortunately, they had found our escaped specimen first.

We ran from the outbuilding toward the shouts as a second loud shotgun blast erupted. “Hurry! We must get to the Martian before they kill it.”

Lowell set his jaw and hurried after me, though he now seemed willing just to let the workmen do what they would to the murderous creature.

We caught up with the scattered mob. Some workers carried kerosene lamps; others waved flaming brands they had grabbed from their campfires. Most held makeshift weapons: wooden boards, a pitchfork, a tree branch. A broad-shouldered man with a shotgun pushed his way to the front of the group, looking full of superstitious fear.

The workmen had cornered the Martian in a dense stand of ponderosa pines. The bloated alien backed against the rough sap-studded bark, raising its tentacles as if in surrender. Pale starbursts of splintered wood showed where a shotgun blast had struck the trunk. Scattered pellets had already injured its hide, and the burly man aimed his gun again.

I charged in like a bear on a rampage. “Stop! Not another shot, you fool! You’ll hurt it.”

“It’s a monster, sir!”

“Kill it before it kills us,” said someone else. “We heard the screams. It’s already done murdered three or four for sure.”

“If you harm my specimen, you will answer to me— and I promise you a more fearsome fate than anything this creature can do to you.”

The workers muttered, looking cowed. Showing no fear, I grabbed the shotgun out of the startled man’s hands. Seeing the wounded Martian helpless and trapped, Lowell reluctantly supported me. “Do as he says.”

I passed the shotgun to Lowell, and he clung to it in a daze while I stepped closer to the injured Martian. Having seen Douglass’s broken body, I knew full well that I was risking my own safety, but I needed to maintain my dominance over the creature.

I turned to the frightened workers, speaking for the Martian’s benefit as much as mine. “Yes, this creature was provoked into killing a man. Is it surprising when a circus lion rears up and turns upon a trainer who has been abusing it? Of course not! You know how dangerous a mother grizzly can be when she protects her cubs.” I lowered my voice, hoping to placate them. “Our friend Andrew Douglass was brash and unwise, and he paid for it with his life. This … animal is far too valuable to be killed for your petty vengeance.”

The men began muttering and grumbling. By morning, word of this story would spread, but Lowell and I could prepare our own documents, submit our discoveries to newspaper reporters and the scientific community. We had crossed the Rubicon, and there could be no turning back.

“Go! All of you,” Lowell said angrily, still gripping the shotgun. “Dr. Moreau and I will handle this matter.”

After the men hesitantly drifted back to their camp, Lowell and I glowered at the cornered Martian. “Regardless of what I said, Moreau, it may be in our best interests to shoot that monster for what it has done.” I was disturbed by his expression of utter defeat.

Too many times I was reminded of the narrow-minded fools who tried to destroy me because of my unorthodox but necessary work. I turned and commanded the Martian. “Back into your building, where you will remain! We will face many difficulties because of what you have done tonight.”

As if recognizing that Lowell truly meant to kill it, the Martian scuttled back toward the outbuilding. I saw that its injuries were minor from the shotgun pellets, and decided not to waste the time or effort dressing them. Perhaps a bit of suffering would make the creature contemplate the outrages it had committed.

When we got back to the splintered door of the shed and somberly removed Douglass’s wretched body, I barricaded the opening as best I could, nailing board after board across the openings. I replaced the hasp and added several more chains to keep our captive securely inside.

I hoped the Martian—and all of us—would now be safe.