Book 1 · Chapter 2

Then came the night of the first shooting star. It was seen early in the morning, speeding over Winchester eastward, a streak of fire high up in the sky. Hundreds must have seen it and thought it was just an ordinary shooting star.

Albin described it as leaving a green glow behind it that lasted for a few seconds. Denning, our best expert on meteorites, said it first appeared about ninety or one hundred miles up. It seemed to him that it fell to earth about one hundred miles east of him.

I was at home at that hour and writing in my study; and although my French windows face towards Ottershaw and the blind was up (I loved to look up at the night sky back then), I didn't see anything.

Yet, the weirdest thing ever to come to Earth from outer space must have fallen while I was sitting there, visible to me if I’d just looked up as it passed. Some people who saw it flying said it made a hissing sound. I didnn't hear anything like that myself.

Lots of people in Berkshire, Surrey, and Middlesex probably saw it fall, and most likely just thought another meteorite had landed. Nobody seemed to bother looking for the fallen object that night.

But very early in the morning, poor Ogilvy, who had seen the shooting star and was convinced a meteorite lay somewhere on the common between Horsell, Ottershaw, and Woking, got up early to find it. He found it soon after dawn, not far from the sand pits.

A huge hole had been made by the impact, and the sand and gravel had been flung everywhere over the heath, forming piles you could see a mile and a half away. The heath was on fire to the east, and a thin blue smoke rose against the dawn.

The object itself was almost entirely buried in sand, among the scattered pieces of a fir tree it had shattered as it fell. The part that was uncovered looked like a huge cylinder, covered and its shape softened by a thick, scaly, brownish coating. It was about thirty yards across.

He approached the thing, surprised by its size and even more so by its shape, because most meteorites are more or less rounded. It was still so hot from its journey through the air that he couldn’t get too close.

He thought the rustling noises inside were from the cylinder unevenly cooling, because he hadn’t yet figured out it might be hollow.

He stood at the edge of the pit the thing had made for itself, staring at its strange appearance, mostly astonished by its unusual shape and color, and even then dimly realizing there was some kind of design to its arrival.

The early morning was really still, and the sun, just peeking over the pine trees towards Weybridge, was already warm. He didn’t remember hearing any birds that morning, there wasn't any breeze, and the only sounds were the faint movements from inside the cindery cylinder.

He was all alone on the common. Then suddenly, he noticed with a start that some of the grey clinker, the ashy coating that covered the meteorite, was falling off the circular edge. It was dropping off in flakes and raining down on the sand.

A large piece suddenly fell off with a sharp noise that made him jump. For a minute he barely understood what this meant, and, even though it was really hot, he climbed down into the pit close to the object to get a better look.

He still thought the cooling might be causing this, but what bothered that idea was that the ash was falling only from the end of the cylinder.

And then he noticed, really slowly, that the top of the cylinder was turning on its body. It was such a gradual movement that he realized it only by seeing a black mark that had been near him five minutes earlier was now on the other side.

Even then, he barely understood what it meant, until he heard a muffled scraping sound and saw the black mark jerk forward a bit. Then it hit him all at once. The cylinder was made by someone - hollow - with a top that screwed off! Something inside the cylinder was unscrewing the top!

"Whoa!" said Ogilvy. "There’s a person in it - people in it! Half-roasted and trying to get out! Immediately, he connected the thing with the flash he’d seen on Mars. The thought of the trapped person was so awful that he forgot about the heat and rushed forward to help turn the cylinder.

Luckily, the still-hot metal stopped him before he could burn his hands. For a moment, he just stood there, frozen, then turned and scrambled out of the pit, running wildly toward Woking. It must have been around six o’clock.

He met a farmer and tried to explain, but his story and his appearance - his hat had fallen off in the pit - were so crazy that the guy just kept driving. He was equally unsuccessful with the barback who was just unlocking the doors of the pub near Horsell Bridge.

The guy thought he was a loon and tried to lock him in the storage room. That shook him up a bit; and when he saw Henderson, the journalist from London, in his garden, he yelled over the fence and finally got his point across. "Henderson," he shouted, "did you see that shooting star last night?"

"Yeah?" said Henderson. "It’s out on Horsell Common now. "Seriously?" said Henderson. "A fallen meteorite! That’s awesome. "But it’s more than just a meteorite. It’s a cylinder - an artificial cylinder, man! And there’s something inside. Henderson stood up with his shovel in his hand.

"What’s that?" he said. He was half-deaf. Ogilvy told him everything he’s seen. Henderson took a minute to process it. Then he dropped his shovel, grabbed his jacket, and came out onto the road. The two guys hurried back to the common, and found the cylinder still there.

But now the sounds inside had stopped, and a thin circle of bright metal showed between the top and the body. Air was either going in or coming out at the edge with a thin, sizzling sound.

They listened, tapped on the scaly, burnt metal with a stick, and, getting no response, they both figured the person or people inside must be unconscious or dead. Of course, they couldn’t do anything. They shouted words of encouragement and promises, and headed back to town to get help.

You can picture them, covered in sand, excited and a mess, running up the little street in the bright sunlight just as the shopkeepers were lowering their shutters and people were opening their bedroom windows. Henderson went straight to the train station to telegraph the news to London.

The news articles had prepared people’s minds for this kind of thing. By eight o’clock, a bunch of kids and unemployed guys had already started out for the common to see the "dead guys from Mars." That’s how the story was spreading.

I heard about it first from my paperboy around a quarter to nine when I went out to get my Daily Chronicle. I was naturally shocked, and didn’t waste any time heading out and across the Ottershaw bridge to the sand-pits.