The Martians announced their presence by radio to Earth, demanded Earth’s surrender. And they gave Earth what they described as “a taste of hell.”
This taste, to Earth’s considerable amusement, turned out to be a very light shower of rockets carrying twelve pounds apiece of TNT.
After giving Earth this taste of hell, the Martians told Earth that Earth’s situation was hopeless.
Earth thought otherwise.
In the next twenty-four hours, Earth fired 617 thermonuclear devices at the Martian bridgehead on the moon. Of these 276 were hits. These hits not only vaporized the bridgehead – they rendered the moon unfit for human occupation for at least ten million years.
And, in a freak of war, one wild shot missed the moon and hit an incoming formation of space ships that carried 15,671 Martian Imperial Commandos. That took care of all the Martian Imperial Commandos there were.
They wore knee spikes, and glossy black uniforms, and carried 14-inch, saw-toothed knives in their boots. Their insignia was a skull and crossbones.
Their motto was Per aspera ad astra, the same as the motto of Kansas, U.S.A., Earth, Solar System, Milky Way.
There was then a lull of thirty-two days, the length of time it took for the main Martian striking force to cross the void between the two planets. This hammer blow consisted of 81,932 troops in 2,311 ships. Every military unit, save for the Martian Imperial Commandos, was represented. Earth was spared suspense as to when this terrible armada might arrive. The Martian broadcasters on the moon, before being vaporized, had promised the arrival of this irresistible force in thirty-two days.
In thirty-two days, four hours, and fifteen minutes, the Martian Armada flew into a radar-directed thermonuclear barrage. The official estimate of the number of thermonuclear anti-aircraft rockets fired at the Martian armada is 2,542,670. The actual number of rockets fired is of little interest when one can express the power of that barrage in another way, in a way that happens to be both poetry and truth. The barrage turned the skies of Earth from heavenly blue to a hellish burnt orange. The skies remained burnt orange for a year and a half.
Of the mighty Martian Armada, only 761 ships carrying 26,635 troops survived the barrage and landed on Earth.
Had all these ships landed at one point, the survivors might have made a stand. But the electronic pilot-navigators of the ships had other ideas. The pilot-navigators scattered the remnants of the armada far and wide over the surface of the Earth. Squads, platoons, and companies emerged from the ships everywhere, demanding that nations of millions give in.
A single, badly scorched man named Krishna Garu attacked all of India with a double-barreled shotgun. Though there was no one to radio-control him, he did not surrender until his gun blew up.
The only Martian military success was the capture of a meat market in Basel, Switzerland, by seventeen Parachute Ski Marines.
Everywhere else the Martians were butchered promptly, before they could even dig in.
As much butchering was done by amateurs as by professionals. At the Battle of Boca Raton, in Florida, U.S.A., for instance, Mrs. Lyman R. Peterson shot four members of the Martian Assault Infantry with her son’s .22 caliber rifle. She picked them off as they came out of their space ship, which had landed in her back yard.
She was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor posthumously.
The Martians who attacked Boca Raton, incidentally, were the remains of Unk’s and Boaz’s company. Without Boaz, their real commander, to radio-control them, they fought listlessly, to say the least.
When American troops arrived at Boca Raton to fight the Martians, there was nothing left to fight. The civilians, flushed and proud, had taken care of everything nicely. Twenty-three Martians had been hanged from lamp posts in the business district, eleven had been shot dead, and one, Sergeant Brackman, was a grievously wounded prisoner in the jail.
The total attacking force had been thirty-five.
“Send us more Martians,” said Ross L. McSwann, the Mayor of Boca Raton.
He later became a United States Senator.
And everywhere the Martians were killed and killed and killed, until the only Martians left free and standing on the face of the Earth were the Parachute Ski Marines carousing in the meat market in Basel, Switzerland. They were told by loudspeaker that their situation was hopeless, that bombers were overhead, that all streets were blocked by tanks and crack infantry, and that fifty artillery pieces were trained on the meat market. They were told to come out with their hands up, or the meat market would be blown to bits.
“Nuts!” yelled the real commander of the Parachute Ski Marines.
There was another lull.
A single Martian scout ship far out in space broad. cast to Earth that another attack was on its way, an attack more terrible than anything ever known in the annals of war.
Earth laughed and got ready. All around the globe there was the cheerful popping away of amateurs familiarizing themselves with small arms.
Fresh stocks of thermonuclear devices were delivered to the launching pads, and nine tremendous rockets were fired at Mars itself. One hit Mars, wiped the town of Phoebe and the army camp off the face of the planet. Two others disappeared in a chrono-synclastic infundibulum. The rest became space derelicts.
It did not matter that Mars was hit.
There was no one there any more – not a soul.
The last of the Martians were on their way to Earth.
The last of the Martians were coming in three waves.
In the first wave came the army reserves, the last of the trained troops – 26,119 men in 721 ships.
A half an Earthling day behind them came 86,912 recently-armed male civilians in 1,788 ships. They had no uniforms, had fired their rifles only once, and had no training at all in the use of any other weapons.
A half an Earthling day behind these wretched irregulars came 1,391 unarmed women and 52 children in 46 ships.
That was all the people and all the ships that Mars had left.
The mastermind behind the Martian suicide was Winston Niles Rumfoord.
The elaborate suicide of Mars was financed by capital gains on investments in land, securities, Broadway shows, and inventions. Since Rumfoord could see into the future, it was easy as pie for him to make money grow.
The Martian treasury was kept in Swiss banks, in accounts identified only by code numbers.
The man who managed the Martian investments, headed the Martian Procurement Program and the Martian Secret Service on Earth, the man who took orders directly from Rumfoord, was Earl Moncrief, the ancient Rumfoord butler. Moncrief, given the opportunity at the very close of his servile life, became Rumfoord’s ruthless, effective, and even brilliant Prime Minister of Earthling Affairs.
Moncrief’s fa�ade remained unchanged.
Moncrief died of old age in his bed in the servants’ wing of the Rumfoord mansion two weeks after the war ended.
The person chiefly responsible for the technological triumphs of the Martian suicide was Salo, Rumfoord’s friend on Titan. Salo was a messenger from the planet Tralfamadore in the Small Magellanic Cloud. Salo had technological know-how from a civilization that was millions of Earthling years old. Salo had a space ship that was crippled – but, even in its crippled condition, it was by far the most marvelous space ship that the Solar System had ever seen. His crippled ship, stripped of luxury features, was the prototype of all the ships of Mars. While Salo himself was not a very good engineer, he was none the less able to measure every part of his ship, and to draw up the plans for its Martian descendants.
Most important of all – Salo had in his possession a quantity of the most powerful conceivable source of energy, UWTB, or the Universal Will to Become. Salo generously donated half of his supply of UWTB to the suicide of Mars.
Earl Moncrief, the butler, built his financial, procurement, and secret service organizations with the brute power of cash and a profound understanding of clever, malicious, discontented people who lived behind servile fa�ades.
It was such people who took the Martian money and the Martian orders gladly. They asked no questions. They were grateful for the opportunity to work like termites on the sills of the established order.
They came from all walks of life.
The modified plans of Salo’s space ship were broken down into plans for components. The plans for the components were taken by Moncrief’s agents to manufacturers all over the world.
The manufacturers had no idea what the components were for. They knew only that the profits on making them were fine.
The first one hundred Martian ships were assembled by Moncrief’s agents in secret depots right on Earth.
These ships were charged with UWTB given to Moncrief by Rumfoord at Newport. They were put into service at once, shuttling the first machines and the first recruits to the iron plain on Mars where the city of Phoebe would rise.