(EVE OF THE WAR)



Journalist:

No one would have believed that 

in the last years of the 19th century

that human affairs where being watched 

from the timeless worlds of space

No one could have dreamed we were being scrutinized

as someone with a microscope studies creatures

that swarm and multiply in a drop of water 

Few man even considered the possibility of life on other planets

and yet across the gulf of space 

minds immeasurably superior to ours 

regarded this Earth with envious eyes 

and slowly and surely 

they drew there plans against us.

At midnight on the 12th of August 

a huge mass of luminous gas erupted from Mars

and sped towarts Earth

Across two-hundred-million miles of void

invisibly hurtling towarts us

came the first of the missiles 

that were bring so much calamity to Earth

As I watchted there was another jet of gas 

It was another missile starting on his way  

And that how it was for the next ten nights 

a flair spurting out from Mars 

Bright green drawing a green mist behind it

A beautiful but somehow disturbing sight

Ogilvy the astronomer assured me we were in no danger

He was convinced there could be no live

on that remote forbidding planet.



# The chances of anything comming from Mars 

are a million to one he said

The chances of anything comming from Mars

but still they come !



Then came the night the first missile approached Earth

it was thought to be an ordinairy falling star

but next day there was a huge crater 

in the middle of the Common

And Ogilvy came to examine what lay there:

A cylinder 30 yards across glowing hot....

and with faint sounds of movement coming from within

Suddenly the top began moving , rotating , unscrewing

And Ogilvy feared there was a man inside

trying to escape 

He rush to the cylinder 

but the intense heat stopped him before 

he could burn himself on the metal.      



# The chances of anything coming from Mars 

are a million to one he said

The chances of anything coming from Mars

are a million to one but they still come

Yes the chances of anything coming from Mars

are a millionto one he said

The chances of anything coming from Mars 

are a million to one but they still come



It seems totally incredibble to me now 

that everyone spent that evening as

though it were just like any other

From the railway station came the sound of shutting trains 

ringing and rumbling softened almost 

into melody by the distance

It all seemed so safe and tranquil



(HORSELL COMMON AND THE HEAT RAY)



Next morning a crowd gathered on the Common

hypnotized by the unscewing of the cylinder

Two feet of shining screw projected 

when suddenly the lid fell off

Two luminous disc-like eyes appeared above the rim

A huge rounded bulk larger than a bear rose up slowly

glistening like wet leather

It's lipless mouth quiverted and slavered

and snake like tentacles wirthed 

as the body heaved and pulsated

A few younger man crept closser to the pitt 

A tall funnel rose than a ivisible ray of heat 

leaped from man to man and there was a bright glare

as each was instantly turned into fire

Every tree and bush became a mass of flames

at the toutch of his savage unearthly heat ray

People clawed their way off the Common

and I ran too I felt I was being toyed with that 

I was on the very verge of safety 

This mysterious death would leap after me

and strike me down

At last I reached Maybury Hill 

and in the dim coolnes of my home    

I wrote an account for my newspaper

before I sank intro a restless haunted sleep



I awoke to alien sounds of hammering from the pit

and hurried to the railway station to buy the paper

Around me the daily routine of life 

working-eating-sleeping 

was continuing serenely as it had for countless years

On Horsell Common 

the Martians continued hammering and stirring

sleepless indefatigable at work upon the machines 

they where making

Now and again a light 

like the beam of a warschip's searchlight

swept the Common and the heat ray was ready to follow

In the afternoon a company of soldiers came trough

and aployed along the edge of the Common to form a cordon



That evening there was a violent crash 

and I realize with horror 

that my home was now in range of the Martian's heat ray

At dawn a falling star with a trail green mist behind it

landed with a flash like summer lightning 



This was the second cylinder