The Map of the Sky (Trilogía Victoriana #2)(77)

XVIII

A FORTNIGHT HAD SUFFICED, HOWEVER, TO transform a happy man into a desperate one. Murray had arrived in London at the beginning of June and had immediately set to work, only to discover that reproducing a Martian invasion was not as easy as he had imagined. On the morning of June fifteenth, Murray was on his way to his offices to attend another rehearsal, even though he was sure it would be no more satisfactory than the previous ones. He had been unable to assemble the same team from two years before when he had transported his contemporaries to the year 2000, and although Martin had sworn blind that the new men were every bit as competent, all Murray had been able to conclude from his employee’s assertion was that he was given to making wild claims.

Reaching Greek Street, Murray slipped unnoticed into the old theater. Martin, a burly redhead almost as big as Murray, came out to the lobby to greet him.

“Everything’s ready, Mr. Murray,” he announced.

“I told you to call me Mr. Gilmore, Martin. Poor Mr. Murray passed away two years ago.”

“Sorry, Mr. Gilmore, it’s just habit.”

Murray nodded absentmindedly.

“Well, no matter,” he said anxiously. “Let’s see what you’ve come up with this time.”

Martin guided him into the warehouse, where the performance would take place. Banished to a corner of the vast hangar, the only surviving witness to his glorious past, stood the Cronotilus. Murray glanced fondly at it before his gaze alighted on the Martian cylinder, now taking up the center of the warehouse. As before, he stood at a distance of about five to six yards, which according to his estimations was as close to it as the alarmed onlookers would dare approach. As for the cylinder, Murray had to confess that Martin’s team had done a splendid job, for it was exactly as Wells had described it. In the novel, which Murray was using as a guide, the Martian device traveled through the 40 million miles separating it from Earth, broke through the atmosphere, hurtled through the sky until it was over Winchester, and finally crashed onto Horsell Common, creating a giant crater where it came to rest, surrounded by a ring of charred grass and gravel. Needless to say, Murray was not capable of creating all that and would have to be content with dismantling the cylinder and transporting it to Horsell under cover of darkness, then reassembling it on the common and singeing a few surrounding tufts of grass, so that in the morning everyone would believe it had flown through space and landed at that precise spot.

However, the machine by itself was regrettably not enough. A Martian had to emerge from it, too. Murray sighed and motioned with his hand toward Martin, who yelled at the cylinder:

“All right, lads, let the show begin!”

With a muffled sound, the top of the cylinder slowly began to unscrew. In Wells’s novel, the capsule took almost a whole day to unscrew itself, so that when the top fell to the ground, dusk was beginning to fall. By that time, an anxious crowd of onlookers and journalists had gathered around the cylinder. Murray realized that he must tell the men inside to take equally long to open the top, so that news of the Martians’ arrival had time to reach the rest of the country, and most importantly to be reported in the newspapers. He might need to bore a few discreet air holes in the casing if he did not want to lose any men during the performance. And he also had to find a way of heating up the cylinder’s surface, less to make it seem as though it had flown through space than to deter inquisitive souls from coming too close to it. Murray’s ruminations were interrupted when he noticed that nearly a foot and a half of the shiny metal screw was now sticking out. A moment later, the top fell to the floor with an almighty clatter. Murray held his breath, as had the numerous witnesses in Wells’s novel, curious to see what was inside. They had all expected to see a man come out, perhaps with some slight physical differences, but a man all the same. A man from Mars. However, the thing stirring in the darkness did not appear human. Wells’s alarmed crowd glimpsed something grey and sinuous, and two luminous disks that could only be eyes, before a pair of tentacles shot out from inside, uncoiling in the air and clasping the sides of the cylinder, unleashing a deluge of horrified screams. Then, slowly and painfully, owing to the greater gravitational pull of the Earth, a greyish rounded bulk emerged from the artifact. According to Wells’s description, the creature’s body glistened and its face exuded a thick, nasty slime. A few seconds later, the Martian appeared to fling itself deliberately into the crater, where it would produce the flying machine in the shape of a stingray, which it would use to attack Earth’s cities. But prior to that, a kind of mast with a parabolic mirror on the end of it would appear from its improvised lair. This would vibrate ominously for a few seconds, and then a heat ray would burst forth from its polished surface sweeping the area and savagely burning to a crisp anything in its path, whether trees, bushes, or people. Murray obviously had no intention of killing the civilians gathered around his cylinder, among whom would figure Emma Harlow. But he needed to scare them, and for that he was depending entirely on the emergence of the Martian. It had to be convincing enough to create the headlines that would win Emma’s heart, or at least that would permit him to marry her.

Murray breathed in sharply and waited for the replica of the Martian his men had made to emerge from the cylinder. He braced himself, ready to face all the horror the universe had to offer, and was instantly overwhelmed by the most terrible dread. Not for the reasons he had expected, for, whichever way Murray looked at it, what emerged from the cylinder would not have scared even a child. It was a kind of rag doll, to which the men had sewn on a few painted cardboard tentacles, with two electric lamps for eyes poking out above the hole that was its mouth, from which oozed what looked like mushy peas mixed with another revolting, lumpier substance. For a few moments, the would-be Martian swayed ridiculously from side to side, pretending to respond to the Earth’s gravity, and finally a pair of hands hurled it from the cylinder. It landed on the ground with a dull thud. The performance over, Martin burst into applause. He looked expectantly at his boss.