Jeff Wayne Horsell Common And The Heat Ray
Next morning a crowd gathered on the Common.
hypnotized by the unscewing of the cylinder.
Two feet of shining screw projected when suddenly the
lid fell off.
Two luminous disc-like eyes appeared above the rim.
A huge rounded bulk larger than a bear rose up slowly
glistening like wet leather.
It's lipless mouth quiverted and slavered and snake
like tentacles wirthed as the body heaved and pulsated.
A few younger man crept closser to the pitt.
A tall funnel rose than a ivisible ray of heat leaped
from man to man and there was a bright glare as each
was instantly turned into fire.
Every tree and bush became a mass of flames at the
toutch of his savage unearthly heat ray.
People clawed their way off the Common and I ran too.
I felt I was being toyed with that I was on the very
verge of safety.
This mysterious death would leap after me and strike me
down.
At last I reached Maybury Hill and in the dim coolnes
of my home I wrote an account for my newspaper before I
sank intro a restless haunted sleep.
I awoke to alien sounds of hammering from the pit
and hurried to the railway station to buy the paper
Around me the daily routine of life
working-eating-sleeping
was continuing serenely as it had for countless years
On Horsell Common
the Martians continued hammering and stirring
sleepless indefatigable at work upon the machines
they where making
Now and again a light
like the beam of a warschip's searchlight
swept the Common and the heat ray was ready to follow
In the afternoon a company of soldiers came trough
and aployed along the edge of the Common to form a
cordon
That evening there was a violent crash
and I realize with horror
that my home was now in range of the Martian's heat ray
At dawn a falling star with a trail green mist
behind it landed with a flash like summer lightning
This was the second cylinder
