The men in charge moved amongst the peasants, brandishing what had seemed to us on first sight to be short canes or sticks, but which now appeared to have a vicious and peremptory function. Some kind of electrical accumulator was evidently within the sticks, for as the men used them to herd the peasants into ranks, any unfortunate soul who was so much as brushed by the stick received a nasty electrical shock, accompanied by a brilliant flash of green light and a loud hissing sound. The hapless recipients of these shocks invariably fell to the ground, clutching the part of the anatomy that had been afflicted, only to be dragged to their feet again by their fellows.
Needless to say, the wielders of these devilish instruments had little difficulty in bringing order to the crowd.
“We must bring a stop to this at once!” Amelia said. “They are treating them no better than slaves!”
I think she was all for marching forward and confronting the men in charge, but I laid my hand on her arm to restrain her.
“We must see what is happening,” I said. “Wait a while… this is not the moment to interfere.”
The confusion persisted for a few minutes more, while the peasants were force-marched towards the building we had not yet visited. Then I noticed that the doors of the enclosed carriages were being wound down into place again, and that the man who had driven the train was moving towards the far end.
I said: “Quickly, Amelia, let us board this train. It is about to leave.”
“But this is the end of the line.”
“Precisely. Don’t you see? It is now going to go in the opposite direction.”
We hesitated no more, but walked quickly across to the train and climbed into the passenger compartment that had been at the front. None of the men with the electrical whips paid the least bit of attention to us, and no sooner were we inside than the train moved slowly forward.
I had expected the motion to be unbalanced—for with only one rail I could not see that it would be otherwise—but once moving the train had a remarkably smooth passage. There was not even the noise of wheels, but simply a gentle whirring noise from beneath the carriage. What we were most appreciative of in those first few seconds, though, was the fact that the carriage was heated. It had been growing cold outside, for it was not long to sunset.
The seating arrangements inside were not too dissimilar from what we were accustomed to at home, although there were no compartments and no corridor. The inside of the carriage was open, so that it was possible to move about from one part to another, and the seats themselves were metal and uncushioned. Amelia and I took seats by one of the windows, looking out across the waterway. We were alone in the carriage.
During the entire journey, which took about half an hour, the scenery beyond the windows did not much change. The railway followed the bank of the waterway for most of the distance, and we saw that in places the banks had been reinforced with brick cladding, thus tending to confirm my early suspicion that the waterway was in fact a large canal. We saw a few small boats plying along it, and in several places there were bridges across it. Every few hundred yards the train would pass another of the metal towers.
The train stopped just once before reaching its destination. On our side of the train it looked as if we had halted at a place no larger than where we had boarded, but through the windows on the other side of the carriage we could see a huge industrial area, with great chimneys issuing copious clouds of smoke, and furnaces setting up an orange glow in the dark sky. The moon was already out, and the thick smoke drifted over its face.
While we were waiting for the train to re-start, and several peasants were being herded aboard, Amelia opened the door briefly and looked up the line, in the direction in which we were heading.
“Look, Edward,” she said. “We are coming to a city.”
I leaned outside too, and saw in the light of the setting sun that a mile or two further on there were many large buildings, clustered together untidily. Like Amelia, I was relieved at this sight, for the all-apparent barbarities of life in the countryside had repelled me. Life in any city, however foreign, is by its nature familiar to other city-dwellers, and there we knew we would find the responsible authorities we were seeking. What ever this country, and however repressive their local laws, we as travellers would receive favoured treatment, and as soon as Amelia and I had come to agreement (which was itself a matter I had still to resolve) we would be bound, by sea or rail, for England. Instinctively, I patted my breast pocket to make sure my wallet was still there. If we were to return immediately to England what little money we had with us—we had established earlier in the day that we had two pounds fifteen shillings and sixpence between us—would have to be used, as a surety of our good faith with the Consul.
Such reassuring thoughts were in my mind as the train moved steadily towards the city. The sun had now set, and the night was upon us.
“See, Edward, the evening star is bright.”
Amelia pointed to it, huge and blue-white, a few degrees above the place of the sun’s setting. Next to it, looking small, and in quarter-phase, was the moon.
I stared at the evening star, remembering Sir William’s words about the planets which made up our solar system. There was one such, lonely and beautiful, impossibly distant and unattainable.
Then Amelia gasped, and I felt my heart tighten in the same moment.
“Edward,” she said. “There are two moons visible!”
The mysteries of this place could no longer be ignored. Amelia and I stared at each other in horror, understanding at long last what had become of us. I thought of the riotous growth of scarlet weed, the thinness of the atmosphere, the freezing cold, the unfiltered heat of the sun, the lightness in our tread, the deep-blue sky, the red-bodied people, the very alienness of all that surrounded us. Now, seeing the two moons, and seeing the evening star, there was a final mystery, one which placed an intolerable burden on our ability to support our dearest belief, that we were still on our home world. Sir William’s Machine had taken us to futurity, but it had also borne us unwittingly through the dimension of Space. A Time Machine it might be, but also a Space Machine, for now both Amelia and I accepted the frightful knowledge that in some incredible way we had been brought to another world, one where our own planet was the herald of night. I stared down at the canal, seeing the brilliant point of light that was Earth reflecting from the water, and knew only desperation and a terrible fear. For we had been transported through Space to Mars, the planet of war.
Chapter Eight
THE CITY OF GRIEF
i
I moved across to sit next to Amelia, and she took my hand.
“We should have realized,” she said, whispering. “Both of us knew we could no longer be on Earth, but neither of us would admit it.”
“We could not have known. It is beyond all experience.”
“So is the notion of travel through Time, and yet we readily accepted that.”
The train lurched slightly, and we felt it begin to slow. I looked past Amelia’s profile, across the arid desert towards that brilliant light in the sky.
“How can we be sure that that is Earth?” I said. “After all, neither of us has ever—”
“Don’t you know, Edward? Can’t you feel it inside you? Doesn’t everything else about this place seem foreign and hostile? Is there not something that speaks to us instinctively when we look at that light? It is a sight of home, and we both feel it.”
“But what are we to do?” The train braked again as I spoke, and looking through the windows on the opposite side of the carriage I saw that we were stopping inside a large, darkened train-shed. On our side of the train a wall came between us and our view of the sky and its ominous reminders.