The Martians Strike Back! by Robert Reginald

Author:Robert Reginald
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: war of the worlds, mars, martians, war, invasion, science fiction
ISBN: 9781434443557
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2013-08-05T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

MAGIC CASEMENTS

That same that oft-times hath

Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam

Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

—John Keats

Nomsah Vassilidis, 5 (?) Bi-November, Mars Year viii

Unknown Location, Planet Mars

I think that I shall never see a Martian as lovely as a tree. I rejoice at the thought, although I still carry my head held high.

What the bloody hell am I doing here? What did I think I could accomplish? I mean, really.

I should have stayed on Earth. I should have done this and that and the other. How can someone who’s supposed to have the gift of foresight be so blind about her own destiny? I never understood that.

After we were trapped in the alien transit-tunnel, they gassed us or something, and when I awoke, I was alone. I was lying naked on a pallet of soft red turf with a warm, moist breeze stirring my hair. I felt like a young girl again. I was, well, a bit buzzed, if you know what I mean. If any of the men in the party had appeared just then, I wouldn’t have vouched for their virtue—or for mine either!

Something small and pink and airy swished by my face, and I almost laughed out loud. Then it came back again, and I saw it clearly for the first time. It looked like a shrimp with four wings. It had three compound eyes on stalks that swiveled in my direction as it hovered there. Then it suddenly swished away and joined a group of its fellow critters, and dashed and darted and dived in joyous swirls of playfulness. The patterns that they made in the air reminded of something else that I’d seen somewhere recently—and then it came to me: they were similar to the light-waves we’d experienced in the tunnel.

I felt a tickle between my thighs, and raised myself up on my two elbows. Down below the bulge of my tummy (I confess to no longer being as slim and trim as I once was) I saw something long and slender and yellow and multi-legged emerge from my womb. It was shiny with the damp.

What was it doing there?

I sat up and tried to slap the bug away, but it was surprisingly quick. I wasn’t even close. It disappeared into the foliage.

Now I could envision my surroundings more clearly. This was a jungle of Martian life: plants, fungi, bugs, flying-creatures, all interacting together. I heard a splash and stood up. On the other side of a “tree” was a pond of pinkish water. I gingerly stepped over and through and around the clinging draperies of ruby vegetation, and then tapped a foot tentatively on the bank. The edge gave slightly, and I sank an inch into a warm lovely bath of sweet-smelling fluid. I quickly plunged in the rest of the way. Even at its center the pool only reached four feet in depth.

Something brushed gently against my leg, and I knew then that the water was somehow alive as well. I never felt threatened or imperiled in any way, only caressed by my environment, alien as it was.

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