The War of the Wenuses | Page 7

act on entering my house, in order to guard against any sudden
irruption on the part of my wife, was to bolt the door and put on the
chain. My next was to visit the pantry, the cellar, and the larder, but
they were all void of food and drink. My wife must have been there
first. As I had drunk nothing since I burgled the Kennington chemist's, I
was very thirsty, though my mind was still hydrostatic. I cannot
account for it on scientific principles, but I felt very angry with my wife.
Suddenly I was struck by a happy thought, and hurrying upstairs I
found a bottle of methylated spirits on my wife's toilet-table. Strange as
it may seem to the sober reader, I drank greedily of the unfamiliar
beverage, and feeling refreshed and thoroughly kinetic, settled down
once more to an exhaustive exposure of the dishonest off-handedness
of the external Examiners at University College. I may add that I had
taken the bread-knife (by Mappin) from the pantry, as it promised to be
useful in the case of unforeseen Clerical emergencies. I should have
preferred the meat-chopper with which the curate had been despatched
in The War of the Worlds, but it was deposited in the South Kensington
Museum along with other mementoes of the Martian invasion. Besides,
my wife and I had both become Wegetarians.

The evening was still, and though distracted at times by recollections of
the Wenuses, I made good progress with my indictment. Suddenly I
was conscious of a pale pink glow which suffused my writing-pad, and
I heard a soft but unmistakable thud as of a pinguid body falling in the
immediate vicinity.
Taking off my boots, I stole gently down to the scullery and applied the
spectroscope to the keyhole. To my mingled amazement and ecstasy, I
perceived a large dome-shaped fabric blocking up the entire back
garden. Roughly speaking, it seemed to be about the size of a
full-grown sperm whale. A faint heaving was perceptible in the mass,
and further evidences of vitality were forthcoming in a gentle but
pathetic crooning, as of an immature chimæra booming in the void. The
truth flashed upon me in a moment. The Second Crinoline had fallen in
my back garden.
My mind was instantly made up. To expose myself unarmed to the
fascination of the Wonderful Wisitors would have irreparably
prejudiced the best interests of scientific research. My only hope lay in
a complete disguise which should enable me to pursue my
investigations of the Wenuses with the minimum amount of risk. A
student of the humanities would have adopted a different method, but
my standpoint has always been dispassionate, anti-sentimental. My
feelings towards the Wenuses were, incredible as it may seem, purely
Platonic. I recognised their transcendental attractions, but had no desire
to succumb to them. Strange as it may seem, the man who succumbs
rarely if ever is victorious in the long run. To disguise my sex and
identity--for it was a priori almost impossible that the inhabitants of
Wenus had never heard of Pozzuoli--would guard me from the
jellifying Mash-Glance of the Wenuses. Arrayed in feminine garb I
could remain immune to their malignant influences.
With me, to think is to act; so I hastily ran upstairs, shaved off my
moustache, donned my wife's bicycle-skirt, threw her sortie de bal
round my shoulders, borrowed the cook's Sunday bonnet from the
servants' bedroom, and hastened back to my post of observation at the
scullery door.

Inserting a pipette through the keyhole and cautiously applying my eye,
I saw to my delight that the Crinoline had been elevated on a series of
steel rods about six feet high, and that the five Wenuses who had
descended in it were partaking of a light but sumptuous repast beneath
its iridescent canopy. They were seated round a tripod imbibing a
brown beverage from small vessels resembling the half of a hollow
sphere, and eating with incredible velocity a quantity of tiny round
coloured objects--closely related, as I subsequently had occasion to
ascertain, to the Bellaria angelica,--which they raised to their mouths
with astonishing and unerring aim in the complex Handling-Machines,
or Tenticklers, which form part of their wonderful organism.
Belonging as they undoubtedly do to the order of the Tunicates, their
exquisitely appropriate and elegant costume may be safely allowed to
speak for itself. It is enough, however, to note the curious fact that there
are no buttons in Wenus, and that their mechanical system is
remarkable, incredible as it may seem, for having developed the eye to
the rarest point of perfection while dispensing entirely with the hook.
The bare idea of this is no doubt terribly repulsive to us, but at the same
time I think we should remember how indescribably repulsive our