The war of the worlds by h. G. Wells

night too there was another outbreak of flam ing gas upon the distant planet. I saw ita reddish flash at the edge just as the clock struck midnight. I told Ogilvy and he took my place at the telescope. That night another invisible missile started on its way to the earth from Mars twentyfour hours after the first one. I remember how I sat there in the darkness not suspecting the meaning of the flash I had seen. Ogilvy watched till one oclock and then gave it up. We left the observatory and walked over to his house. In the valley below us were the little towns of Ottershaw and Chertsey with all their hundreds of people sleeping in peace.
Ogilvy was full of talk that night about the condition of Mars and mocked at the idea of its having inhab itants who were trying to signal us. His explanation was that meteorites might be falling upon it or that huge volcanic explosion might be in progress. He pointed out to me how unlikely it was that life had developed in the same way upon the two neighbouring planets.
The chances against anything manlike on Mars are a million to one he said.
Hundreds of observers saw the flame that night and the night after about midnight and again the night after and so on for ten nights a flame each night. No one on earth has been able to explain why the shots ceased after the tenth. It may be because the gases of the firing caused the Martians inconvenience. Even the daily papers woke up at last to the distur
bances and popular notes appeared here there and everywhere concerning the volcanoes upon Mars. Meanwhile unsuspected by man those missiles the Martians had fired at us flew towards the earth rushing at a speed of many miles a second through the empty gulf of space hour by hour and day by day nearer and nearer. It seems to me now almost unbelievably wonderful that with the swift fate approaching us men could go about their little daily affairs as they did. For my own part I was much occupied in learning to ride the bicycle bicycles were not so common then as they are today and busy upon an article discussing the probable developments of moral ideas as civilization progressed.
One night the first missile then could scarcely have been 10000000 miles away