Book 1 · Chapter 8

Honestly, the craziest thing to me, out of everything weird that happened that Friday, was how normal life just kept going while this whole series of events started that would totally wreck everything we knew.

If you’d taken a compass and drawn a five-mile circle around the Woking sand-pits on Friday night, I doubt you’d find a single person outside it - unless they were related to Stent, or one of the few cyclists or people from London who were already dead on the common.

Their feelings or routines wouldn't have been affected by the newcomers. Lots of people had heard about the cylinder, of course, and talked about it casually, but it didn’t cause the stir that an ultimatum to Germany would have.

In London that night, poor Henderson’s telegram about the cylinder slowly unscrewing was dismissed as fake news, and his evening paper, after trying to confirm it with him and getting no reply - the guy was killed - decided not to run a special edition.

Even within that five-mile circle, most people were just going about their lives. I already told you about the people I talked to.

All over the area, people were having dinner; working folks were doing yard work after a long day, kids were getting put to bed, young people were strolling through the lanes making out, and students were studying.

Maybe there was some chatter in the village streets, a new hot topic in the pubs, and here and there a messenger, or even someone who’t actually seen what happened, caused a little excitement, some shouting, and people running around.

But mostly, the usual routine of working, eating, drinking, and sleeping went on like it had for ages - like no planet Mars existed in the sky. That was the case even at Woking station and Horsell and Chobham.

At Woking junction, until really late, trains were stopping and going, others were being moved around on the sidings, passengers were getting off and waiting, and everything was totally normal. A kid from town, digging around on Smith’s property, was selling papers with the afternoon’s news.

The loud rumble of the train cars, the sharp whistle of the engines from the junction, mixed with their shouts of "Men from Mars! A group of excited guys came into the station around nine o’clock with unbelievable news, but they didn’t cause more of a fuss than a bunch of drunk people would have.

People heading back to London peered into the darkness outside the carriage windows, and saw only a strange, flickering, disappearing spark dance up from the direction of Horsell, a red glow and a thin veil of smoke drifting across the stars, and thought that nothing more serious than a brush fire was happening.

It was only around the edge of the common that anything was noticeable. There were about half a dozen houses burning on the Woking border. There were lights in all the houses on the common side of the three villages, and the people there stayed up until dawn.

A curious crowd hung around restlessly, people coming and going but the crowd staying put, both on the Chobham and Horsell bridges.

A couple of brave souls, it turned out later, went into the darkness and got really close to the Martians; but they never came back, because now and then a beam of light, like from a warship’s searchlight, swept the common, and the Heat-Ray was ready to follow.

Except for those few, that big area of common was quiet and deserted, and the burned-out bodies lay scattered across it all night under the stars, and all the next day. A sound of hammering from the pit was heard by many people.

Okay, so this is what things were like Friday night. Right in the middle, sticking into our planet Earth like a really bad shot, was this cylinder. But the damage wasn't really kicking in yet.

All around it was this quiet field, smoking in spots, and with a few dark, twisted shapes lying around here and there. Some bushes or trees were burning. Further out, there was a buzz of activity, and beyond that, the area hadn't been affected yet.

Everywhere else, life was flowing like it always had for centuries. The war fever that would soon mess everything up - clogging everything, shutting down nerves, and frying brains - hadn't even started to build up.

All night long, the Martians were working like crazy, not sleeping, super dedicated, building their machines. Every so often, a puff of greenish-white smoke would shoot up into the starry sky.

Around eleven, a bunch of soldiers came through Horsell and lined up along the edge of the field to block it off. Later, another group marched through Chobham to set up on the other side of the field.

A few officers from the Inkerman barracks had been out there earlier, and one, Major Eden, was reported missing. The colonel of the regiment showed up at the Chobham bridge and was busy asking everyone questions at midnight. The military definitely knew something was up.

Around eleven the next morning, the newspapers could report that a squadron of hussars, two Maxims, and about four hundred men from the Cardigan regiment had left Aldershot.

Just after midnight, the people in the Chertsey Road in Woking saw a star fall from the sky and land in the pine woods to the northwest. It was greenish and glowed silently, like a flash of lightning on a summer night. This was the second cylinder.