Edison's Conquest of Mars Read online

  CHAPTER ONE

  _"LET US GO TO MARS"_

  It is impossible that the stupendous events which followed thedisastrous invasion of the earth by the Martians should go withoutrecord, and circumstances having placed the facts at my disposal, I deemit a duty, both to posterity and to those who were witnesses of andparticipants in the avenging counterstroke that the earth dealt back atits ruthless enemy in the heavens, to write down the story in aconnected 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 crudest blow in the act of departure.

  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 theHudson that drowned the opposite shore.

  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 broughtwith them had proved irresistible and the inhabitants of the earthpossessed nothing capable of contending against them. There had been noprotection for the great cities; no protection even for the opencountry. Everything had gone down before the savage onslaught of thosemerciless invaders from space. Savage ruins covered the sites of manyformerly flourishing towns and villages, and the broken walls of greatcities stared at the heavens like the exhumed skeletons of Pompeii. Theawful agencies had extirpated pastures and meadows and dried up the verysprings of fertility in the earth where they had touched it. In someparts of the devastated lands pestilence broke out; elsewhere there wasfamine. Despondency black as night brooded over some of the fairestportions of the globe.

  Yet all had not been destroyed, because all had not been reached by thewithering hand of the destroyer. The Martians had not had time tocomplete their work before they themselves fell a prey to the diseasesthat carried them off at the very culmination of their triumph.

  From those lands which had, fortunately, escaped invasion, relief wassent to the sufferers. The outburst of pity and of charity exceededanything that the world had known. Differences of race and religion wereswallowed up in the universal sympathy which was felt for those who hadsuffered so terribly from an evil that was as unexpected as it wasunimaginable in its enormity.

  But the worst was not yet. More dreadful than the actual suffering andthe scenes of death and devastation which overspread the afflicted landswas the profound mental and moral depression that followed. This wasshared even by those who had not seen the Martians and had not witnessedthe destructive effects of the frightful engines of war that they hadimported for the conquest of the earth. All mankind was sunk deep inthis universal despair, and it became tenfold blacker when theastronomers announced from their observatories that strange lights werevisible, moving and flashing upon the red surface of the Planet of War.These mysterious appearances could only be interpreted in the light ofpast experience to mean that the Martians were preparing for anotherinvasion of the earth, and who could doubt that with the invinciblepowers of destruction at their command they would this time make theirwork complete and final?

  This startling announcement was the more pitiable in its effects becauseit served to unnerve and discourage those few of stouter hearts and morehopeful temperaments who had already begun the labor of restoration andreconstruction amid the embers of their desolated homes. In New Yorkthis feeling of hope and confidence, this determination to rise againstdisaster and to wipe out the evidences of its dreadful presence asquickly as possible, had especially manifested itself. Already a companyhad been formed and a large amount of capital subscribed for thereconstruction of the destroyed bridges over the East River. Alreadyarchitects were busily at work planning new twenty-story hotels andapartment houses; new churches and new cathedrals on a grander scalethan before.

  Amid this stir of renewed life came the fatal news that Mars wasundoubtedly preparing to deal us a death blow. The sudden revulsion offeeling flitted like the shadow of an eclipse over the earth. The scenesthat followed were indescribable. Men lost their reason. Thefaint-hearted ended the suspense with self-destruction, thestout-hearted remained steadfast, but without hope and knowing not whatto do.

  But there was a gleam of hope of which the general public as yet knewnothing. It was due to a few dauntless men of science, conspicuous amongwhom were Lord Kelvin, the great English savant; Herr Roentgen, thediscover of the famous X-ray, and especially Thomas A. Edison, theAmerican genius of science. These men and a few others had examined withthe utmost care the engines of war, the flying machines, the generatorsof mysterious destructive forces that the Martians had produced, withthe object of discovering, if possible, the sources of their power.

  Suddenly from Mr. Edison's laboratory at Orange flashed the startlingintelligence that he had not only discovered the manner in which theinvaders had been able to produce the mighty energies which theyemployed with such terrible effect, but that, going further, he hadfound a way to overcome them.

  The glad news was quickly circulated throughout the civilized world.Luckily the Atlantic cables had not been destroyed by the Martians, sothat communication between the Eastern and Western continents wasuninterrupted. It was a proud day for America. Even while the Martianshad been upon the earth, carrying everything before them, demonstratingto the confusion of the most optimistic that there was no possibility ofstanding against them, a feeling--a confidence had manifested itself inFrance, to a minor extent in England, and particularly in Russia, thatthe Americans might discover means to meet and master the invaders.

  Now, it seemed, this hope and expectation was to be realized. Too late,it is true, in a certain sense, but not too late to meet the newinvasion which the astronomers had announced was impending. The effectwas as wonderful and indescribable as that of the despondency which buta little while before had overspread the world. One could almost hearthe universal sigh of relief which went up from humanity. To reliefsucceeded confidence--so quickly does the human spirit recover like anelastic spring, when pressure is released.

  "Let them come," was the almost joyous cry. "We shall be ready for themnow. The Americans have solved the problem. Edison has placed the meansof victory within our power."

  Looking back upon that time now, I recall, with a thrill, the pride thatstirred me at the thought that, after all, the inhabitants of the earthwere a match for those terrible men from Mars, despite all the advantagewhich they had gained from their millions of years of prior civilizationand science.

  As good fortunes, like bad, never come singly, the news of Mr. Edison'sdiscovery was quickly followed by additional glad tidings from thatlaboratory of marvels in the lap of the Orange mountains. During theircareer of conquest the Martians had astonished the inhabitants of theearth no less with their flying machines--which navigated our atmosphereas easily as they had that of their native planet--than with their moredestructive inventions. These flying machines in themselves had giventhem an enormous advantage in the contest. High above the desolationthat they had caused to reign on the surface of the earth, and, out ofthe range of our guns, they had hung safe in the upper air. From theclouds they had dropped death upon the earth.

  Now, rumor declared that Mr. Edison had i
nvented and perfected a flyingmachine much more complete and manageable than those of the Martians hadbeen. Wonderful stories quickly found their way into the newspapersconcerning what Mr. Edison had already accomplished with the aid of hismodel electrical balloon. His laboratory was carefully guarded againstthe invasion of the curious, because he rightly felt that a prematureannouncement, which should promise more than could actually befulfilled, would, at this critical juncture, plunge mankind back againinto the gulf of despair, out of which it had just begun to emerge.

  Nevertheless, inklings of the truth leaked out. The flying machine hadbeen seen by many persons hovering by night high above the Orange hillsand disappearing in the faint starlight as if it had gone away into thedepths of space, out of which it would re-emerge before the morninglight had streaked the east, and be seen settling down again within thewalls that surrounded the laboratory of the great inventor. At lengththe rumor, gradually deepening into a conviction, spread that Edisonhimself, accompanied by a few scientific friends, had made anexperimental trip to the moon. At a time when the spirit of mankind wasless profoundly stirred, such a story would have been received withcomplete incredulity, but now, rising on the wings of the new hope thatwas buoying up the earth, this extraordinary rumor became a day star oftruth to the nations.

  And it was true. I had myself been one of the occupants of the car ofthe flying Ship of Space on that night when it silently left the earth,and rising out of the great shadow of the globe, sped on to the moon. Wehad landed upon the scarred and desolate face of the earth's satellite,and but that there are greater and more interesting events, the tellingof which must not be delayed, I should undertake to describe theparticulars of this first visit of men to another world.

  _I had myself been one of the occupants of the carof the flying Ship of Space on that night, when it silently left theearth, and, rising out of the great shadow of the globe, sped on to themoon._]

  But, as I have already intimated, this was only an experimental trip. Byvisiting this little nearby island in the ocean of space, Mr. Edisonsimply wished to demonstrate the practicability of his invention, and toconvince, first of all, himself and his scientific friends that it waspossible for men--mortal men--to quit and to revisit the earth at theirwill. That aim this experimental trip triumphantly attained.

  It would carry me into technical details that would hardly interest thereader to describe the mechanism of Mr. Edison's flying machine. Let itsuffice to say that it depended upon the principal of electricalattraction and repulsion. By means of a most ingenious and complicatedconstruction he had mastered the problem of how to produce, in a limitedspace, electricity of any desired potential and of any polarity, andthat without danger to the experimenter or to the material experimentedupon. It is gravitation, as everybody knows, that makes man a prisoneron the earth. If he could overcome, or neutralize, gravitation he couldfloat away, a free creature of interstellar space. Mr. Edison in hisinvention had pitted electricity against gravitation. Nature, in fact,had done the same thing long before. Every astronomer knew it, but nonehad been able to imitate or to reproduce this miracle of nature. When acomet approaches the sun, the orbit in which it travels indicates thatit is moving under the impulse of the sun's gravitation. It is inreality falling in a great parabolic or elliptical curve through space.But, while a comet approaches the sun it begins to display--stretchingout for millions, and sometimes hundreds of millions of miles on theside away from the sun--an immense luminous train called its tail. Thistrain extends back into that part of space from which the comet ismoving. Thus the sun at one and the same time is drawing the comettoward itself and driving off from the comet in an opposite directionminute particles or atoms which, instead of obeying the gravitationalforce, are plainly compelled to disobey it. That this energy, which thesun exercises against its own gravitation, is electrical in its nature,hardly anybody will doubt. The head of the comet being comparativelyheavy and massive, falls on toward the sun, despite the electricalrepulsion. But the atoms which form the tail, being almost withoutweight, yield to the electrical rather than to the gravitationalinfluence, and so fly away from the sun.

  Now, what Mr. Edison had done was, in effect, to create an electrifiedparticle which might be compared to one of the atoms composing the tailof a comet, although in reality it was a kind of car, of metal, weighingsome hundreds of pounds and capable of bearing some thousands of poundswith it in its flight. By producing, with the aid of the electricalgenerator contained in this car, an enormous charge of electricity, Mr.Edison was able to counterbalance, and a trifle more thancounterbalance, the attraction of the earth, and thus cause the car tofly off from the earth as an electrified pithball flies from the primeconductor.

  As we sat in the brilliantly lighted chamber that formed the interior ofthe car, and where stores of compressed air had been provided togetherwith chemical apparatus, by means of which fresh supplies of oxygen andnitrogen might be obtained for our consumption during the flight throughspace, Mr. Edison touched a polished button, thus causing the generationof the required electrical charge on the exterior of the car, andimmediately we began to rise.

  The moment and direction of our flight had been so timed andprearranged, that the original impulse would carry us straight towardthe moon.

  When we fell within the sphere of attraction of that orb it only becamenecessary to so manipulate the electrical charge upon our car as nearly,but not quite, to counterbalance the effect of the moon's attraction inorder that we might gradually approach it and with an easy motion,settle, without shock, upon its surface.

  We did not remain to examine the wonders of the moon, although we couldnot fail to observe many curious things therein. Having demonstrated thefact that we could not only leave the earth, but could journey throughspace and safely land upon the surface of another planet, Mr. Edison'simmediate purpose was fulfilled, and we hastened back to the earth,employing in leaving the moon and landing again upon our own planet thesame means of control over the electrical attraction and repulsionbetween the respective planets and our car which I have alreadydescribed.

  When actual experiment had thus demonstrated the practicability of theinvention, Mr. Edison no longer withheld the news of what he had beendoing from the world. The telegraph lines and the ocean cables laboredwith the messages that in endless succession, and burdened with aninfinity of detail, were sent all over the earth. Everywhere the utmostenthusiasm was aroused.

  "Let the Martians come," was the cry. "If necessary, we can quit theearth as the Athenians fled from Athens before the advancing host ofXerxes, and like them, take refuge upon our ships--these new ships ofspace, with which American inventiveness has furnished us."

  And then, like a flash, some genius struck out an idea that fired theworld.

  "Why should we wait? Why should we run the risk of having our citiesdestroyed and our lands desolated a second time? Let us go to Mars. Wehave the means. Let us beard the lion in his den. Let us ourselves turnconquerors and take possession of that detestable planet, and ifnecessary, destroy it in order to relieve the earth of this perpetualthreat which now hangs over us like the sword of Damocles."