A facility with mathematics had placed me in the artillery
during the Invasion, although I never fired a shot at a Martian before they
collapsed. Like so much of the rest of the world, the United States were
unprepared for war in a material sense, though I am proud to say we overcame
our moral deficiencies in short order. The Martians had chosen points along the
coast for their initial landings, perhaps in the mistaken belief that, as on
their own waterless world, the great prairies were the heart of our
civilization and the coastal areas mere wilderness. Thus they landed among the
great industrial cities of the Northeast, doing great damage, but through some
fortunate chance they chose spots between the great ports of the South.
This allowed our forces time to concentrate. The Martians
were slow to recognize the tremendous organizing power of our railways, which
allowed entire states to gather their militia at a single spot in a few days’
time. Telegraph and telephone wires ran along every track, even in the desolate
West. The lines along which the conquering Union had laid waste the Confederacy
had become rail lines, at first to support the blue-coated armies and then to
serve the cities that rose in their train.
So it was that no Martian could move more than fifty miles
without coming across a railroad line, along which, if we chose, the United
States could gather thousands of troops. Not that we, in the first instance,
had thousands of troops to move. But as in that great spasm of violence at
midcentury, American manhood rapidly put aside the civilian and adopted the
soldier, even if for the duration of the conflict most of them wore no uniform
save dust.
Our mobility was the downfall of the Regular Army, for it
was the first to engage the Martians and, therefore, to perish. But enough
escaped those early-summer debacles to command and organize the vast host of
citizen-soldiers, armed with explosives manufactured in a thousand pharmacies
and photography-shops across the Mississippi valley.
Eventually, the sinews of war began to arrive from
hastily-converted or newly-built factories in remote places beyond the
Martians’ reach. For though the entirety of our world lay vulnerable to their
descent from the sky, once here they could not move about on our surface more
quickly than our trains, although their more versatile vehicles were not
limited to predetermined tracks. Nor could they easily transport
re-enforcements from distant Mars, and when they did do so, their landing
points were often wildly at variance with the needs of the developing battle.
Our Major, a former Confederate, opined that as an
artilleryman he was unsurprised by the odd Martian re-enforcement decisions. He
believed that it was evident from their dispositions that the invaders were
unable to communicate with their fellows upon Mars; that the voyage across the
space between us was not called upon by the Martians among us, but made
according to previously-drawn-up plans, which neither the Martians on Earth nor
on Mars were at liberty to vary, because of the lack of communication between
themselves. The Martians, he said, no doubt had carefully planned their
campaign in North America to the last detail, deciding that so-and-so-many days
after landing they would need three more war machines in Iowa, and a half-dozen
along the Alleghany River. But they were wrong in their estimation of our
powers of resistance, and perhaps even in their own war-making potential; for
it might have been many, many years since they had fought, not a map incapable
of reasoning, but a living enemy whose stratagems would constantly come as a fresh surprise to
its foe.
By the time, then, that our battery was equipped with
splendid new six-inch rifled cannon, the Invasion was over. The Martians, as
everyone knows, slipped into a torpor which deepened rapidly into death,
overcome by the micro-organisms responsible for the (apparently uniquely)
Earthly phenomena of decay and disease. We fired some shells for practice,
there being unending trainloads of them available, and became proficient with
our arms; but no enemy did we engage, there being none remaining.
The Artillery, for reasons I have described above, became
the dominant arm of the United States Army, merging in an unprecedented way
with our counterparts in the Naval Bureau of Ordnance. For it was cannon, or
the lineal descendants of cannon, which we used to bombard and planned to use
to invade the Red Planet. Great guns launched loads of timber and steel into
orbit, shot food and water to feed the laborers in our aerial siege-works,
lofted arms and ammunition to provision the great invasion. We, as the Martians
before us, would be unable to adapt our assault to the tides of the moment; as
no fewer than fifty million miles would ever separate us from Mars (and at maximum,
nearly five times as many), our invasion must be launched days or weeks before
the first foot bit into red soil. If we faltered in one spot, our generals
could not call for more troops from distant Earth, nor, even if they could,
would the rescuers arrive before weeks had passed, during which the issue would
most probably have been decided.
True, the French had proposed firing some capsules, not
directly at the surface of Mars, but into an orbit around it, as a sort of
floating reserve; and preparations were being made to devise projectiles
capable of descending where they would. Indeed, all our invasion projectiles
(it seems false to call them “vessels” as they were as helpless to affect their
trajectory as a falling stone, and for the same reasons) could have been made
with this capability. In that case, we could have filled the Martian sky with
our soldiers, dropping them into places were our foe was weakest.
But such a projectile would of necessity be more complicated
than a simple one-way ballistic conveyance. Being more complicated, it would
demand more effort and labor to construct it. And the supply of effort and
labor, though very large despite the damage done by the invaders, was not
unlimited.
For the same effort it required to assemble one self-steering
capsule, nine or ten of the simpler model could be constructed. This, most
nations chose to do. For because our invasion of Mars would have to be planned
in advance, with no allowance for the mischances of war, our planners concluded
there were only two ways to assure its success: one mathematical, the other
moral.
If we could not conclude where the invading Earthmen would
do well, and where they would falter, we would have to ensure that no matter
what terrible reversals we suffered, there would be ample troops on hand to
overcome them. Therefore, we would rely on sheer numbers, sending as many of
our soldiers aloft as we could possibly manage. It would mean postponing our
counter-stroke some years while the launchers and capsules were gathered, but
our blow would be all the stronger for having been delayed.
Even so, we could not hope to convey even one per cent of
our strength under arms across the gulf of space. Therefore, we would choose
our best, through tests, challenges, competitions and mock combats, so that the
quality of the force which went out from Earth would be as high as our
unstinting efforts could make it. With some years to learn the craft of war, we
would strive to make that comparative sliver of humanity’s millions which would
face the enemy, equal to this most unprecedented of challenges.
It is only with the greatest
humility, and a suspicion that somewhere in the vast administrative machinery
the Army had blundered, that I admit I was chosen as one of this corps d’elite which would avenge the
Earth.
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