Book 1 · Chapter 6

It's still crazy how the Martians can kill people so quickly and quietly. A lot of people think they somehow create super-intense heat inside a chamber that’s basically non-conductive - meaning it doesn’t let heat escape.

They shoot this heat out in a straight beam, like a laser, using a polished, curved mirror made of something we donn't know. It's kind of like how a lighthouse projects a beam of light, but with heat. Nobody's proven exactly how they do it, though.

Whatever the secret is, it's clear that a beam of heat is what's doing the damage. Heat, and a kind of invisible light instead of the light we can see.

Anything that burns instantly bursts into flames when it touches the beam, lead melts like water, it softens iron, cracks and melts glass, and when it hits water, the water instantly explodes into steam.

That night, nearly forty people lay under the stars around the pit, completely burned and unrecognizable. All night long, the area from Horsell to Maybury was deserted and on fire. The news of the massacre probably reached Chobham, Woking, and Ottershaw around the same time.

In Woking, the shops had closed when the tragedy happened, and a bunch of people - shop workers and others - were walking over Horsell Bridge and along the road between the hedges that led out to the common, drawn by the stories they'd heard.

You can picture the young people, all dressed up after a long day, treating this as an excuse to walk together and flirt a little. You could hear the buzz of conversations along the road as evening fell. . . .

Of course, very few people in Woking even knew that the cylinder had opened, though poor Henderson had sent a messenger on a bike to the post office with a special message to an evening paper.

As these people came out in pairs and small groups onto the open area, they found small groups of people talking excitedly and looking at the spinning mirror over the sand pits. The newcomers were quickly caught up in the excitement.

By half past eight, when the group of representatives was destroyed, there were probably three hundred people or more at this place, plus those who had left the road to get closer to the Martians.

There were also three police officers, one on horseback, doing their best - following instructions from Stent - to keep people back and stop them from approaching the cylinder.

There was some heckling from the more thoughtless and excitable people, for whom a crowd is always an opportunity to make noise and act silly.

Stent and Ogilvy, expecting some kind of confrontation, had telegraphed from Horsell to the barracks as soon as the Martians appeared, asking for a company of soldiers to protect these strange creatures from violence. After that, they went back to lead that disastrous advance.

The description of their deaths, as seen by the crowd, matches my own memories very closely: the three puffs of green smoke, the deep humming sound, and the flashes of flame. But that crowd of people had an even narrower escape than I did.

Luckily, a small hill covered in heather blocked the lower part of the Heat-Ray. If the parabolic mirror had been a few yards higher, nobody would have survived to tell the story.

They saw the flashes and people falling, and it seemed like an invisible hand lit the bushes as it sped towards them in the twilight.

Then, with a whistling sound that rose above the humming of the pit, the beam swung over their heads, lighting the tops of the beech trees that line the road, splitting the bricks, smashing the windows, firing the window frames, and bringing down a section of the gable of the house nearest the corner in a pile of rubble.

The trees exploded in a sudden crash, hiss, and burst of light, and the terrified crowd seemed to wobble back and forth for a moment. Sparks and burning bits of wood started falling onto the road, and leaves flew by like tiny flames. Hats and dresses caught on fire.

Then, someone started screaming from the center of the crowd. There were shrieks and shouts, and suddenly a police officer on horseback burst through the chaos, hands over his head, yelling.

"They’re coming!" a woman screamed, and everyone just spun around, shoving the people behind them to get back to Woking. They bolted like a herd of sheep. Where the road narrowed between the high banks, the crowd jammed together, and a desperate fight broke out.

Not everyone got out - at least three people, two women and a little boy, were crushed and trampled, left to die in the terror and the darkness.