[PART 2]

MAN’S DESTINY?

Throughout mankind’s comparatively short written history, and perhaps even before, we had learned it had been war rather than peace, which had decided man’s destiny. It was this way in the First Martian War as well, and it will be in the next war, but only if mankind is so foolish as to once again feed upon itself, knowing there is an even greater threat from space yet standing just off stage now left waiting for their next opportunity to attack.

            From the speed of the Martian attacks and the singular devastation their weapons had delivered it was clear that alone mankind could not have mustered the military strength or perhaps even the will to stop this “War of the Worlds”. The people of Earth had to face the fact that humanity had gotten damn lucky to still be here, even knowing how bad it had been. We survivors also needed to face the unpleasant reality that we could no longer rely upon luck. The ethereal gulf between solar planets no longer protected our home world; in fact it never had. Humanity needed a comprehensive plan for defense and recovery and they needed it immediately if we were to continue as a species! For this had been our long anticipated Armageddon and only by the grace of the gods were we still in the fight and clearly the fight was not over yet. Nevertheless, mankind and our planet as a whole had stood the test and had not been destroyed – at least not this time! However, we had no way of knowing if or when the invaders would return. There were no longer any hard guarantees ignorantly based on our ‘isolation’ in space. All that we knew or thought we knew had to be questioned in the face of this new deadly reality.

            With his mind and his hands man had transformed his natural world to forge the industrial revolution and had been looking towards a new century with all the hope and wonder of a newborn child. This was the age of the tycoon as the major industrial nations were ruled by big business. The coming of the Martians had changed all of that. Now a major portion of that hard fought industrial transformation lay in blackened smoking ruin. Death was the new reality and with that new truth firmly in our minds we needed to pick ourselves up and transform what remained of our badly wounded society into a smoothly functioning machine and rebuild our tattered world and its industrial base to include the willpower to develop a method of collective security for all nations on Earth. We would find along the way that fixing our machines would be a great deal easier than forging a world alliance needed to truly defend our world. Man’s many wars played upon ourselves were not a thing of the past. There would be many missteps along the way.

            We needed to understand there was much we had not seen or had simply chosen to ignore before the Martians arrived, and now partly because of our collective ignorance there was a great deal of hard work to be done and damn little time to do it before the next anticipated onslaught. We also needed to discover what clues we had missed as it pertained to the Martian invasion. You see in order to peer into the future with better clarity and prepare ourselves for what may yet come our way we needed to look deeply into our past to discover what we had failed to see. With that view it soon became apparent we had indeed missed a great deal even though earlier upheavals on Earth had removed much evidence of ancient visits to our planet by the always dangerous Martians as well as ‘others.’

What we failed to properly see.

            Towards the end of the 19^th Century a popular feeling of fin de aiecle was becoming prevalent in some areas. It was some unstated vague notion that before long mankind would face a “day of reckoning.” It had an almost deep unstated religious aspect to it all that there was an indescribable evil about. There seemed to be a great darkness of unspoken fear just ahead. No one could yet put a name or a face to it. That unknown fear would soon manifest itself in the form of a creature from the planet Mars.

PLANET MARS AND HER ‘CANALI’

            I believe it was Roman philosopher Lucretuis who said, “A new fact is battling strenuously for access to your ears. A new aspect of the universe is striving to reveal itself. But no fact is so simple that it is not harder to believe than to doubt at the first presentation.” Humans are by nature explorers but, we had all failed to properly see and we would soon pay the price for such failure.

            In 1659 Dutch telescope observer Christian Huygens drew a dark triangle later named Syrtis Major on the face of Mars and was able to deduce by tracking its rotation that Mars had a day slightly longer than ours. He would also propose that Mars, as well as other planets, had plants and animals and perhaps even intelligent beings. Little could he have known those intelligent creatures from Mars had already visited his world and were keeping a very close eye on his blue-green planet.

            Mars had presented itself as the only planet in the solar system whose solid surface we could see, measure and explore by simple optical means and yet we would fail to note or accept many but not all of its significant features at least when it came to the possibility of intelligent life on our next door planetary neighbor. Historically however, this had not always been the case. Many of the American founding fathers who had been involved in their revolution had also believed in life on other planets including Jefferson, Franklin, Adams and Thomas Paine. Certainly many ancient native groups around the world held this same view. Lowell would write, “…during the summer of the Martian southern hemisphere, a wave of seasonal change swept down from the poles over the face of the planet.” It is in fact a very dynamic world.

            Amazingly 1881 saw the publication of a short article concerning Mars by an unknown author writing a piece for the International Exposition of Electronics in Paris. The work described a fictional account of an invasion of Earth by brutal Martians! This ‘fictional’ piece described Mars as becoming too cold to support a dying Martian civilization thus forcing that ancient civilization to strike out to our planet in search of a new home. Remarkably, this tall tale relating things Martian even had Earth’s military forces brought to their knees until Earth’s “lethal atmosphere and deadly bacteria” finally spelled an end to the Martian attack. I could only ask: What crystal ball was this unnamed writer peering into?

            Nine years later Frederick Ratzel, Professor of Geography at Leipzig University in Germany would write of the need for “lebensraum” or “living space” to be acquired by advanced civilizations at the cost of losing such areas by those who were less advanced and thus at a disadvantage when it came to defending their territory. The Martians would have fully understood his ideas as would any dictator who ever pounced upon a weaker people on Earth.

            In 1871 British astronomer Richard A. Proctor wrote, “There must be rivers on Mars. The mere existence of continents and oceans on Mars proves the action of forces. There must be mountains and hills, valleys and ravines, watersheds and watercourses.” 

            In 1882 Professor Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli, Director of the Brera Observatory in Milan, Italy, made his first critical observational report on Mars in the French journal L’ Astronamie having done much work during the close approach of Mars in 1877. I remember being fascinated with the report as I read the translated version for the first time. He reported, “There are on this planet, traversing the continents long dark lines which may be designated as canali, although we do not know what they are. These lines run from one to another of the somber spots that are regarded as seas, and form, over the lighter, or continental, regions a well-defined network. This arrangement appears to be invariable and permanent; at least as far as I can judge from four and a half years of observation. Nevertheless, their aspect and their degree of visibility are not always the same, and depend upon circumstances which the present state of our knowledge does not yet permit us to explain with certainty.” In the city of Milan he would draw the first truly detailed map of Mars. It would be a few years before these canali were thought to be something other than a natural feature across the face of Mars. We were not yet ready to believe in “men from Mars!”

            At first even Schiaparelli was cautious in stating that these great works were most likely artificial. “It is not necessary to suppose them to be the work of intelligent beings, and we are now inclined to believe them to be produced by the evolution of the planet. Their singular aspect, as if they were the work of rule and compass, has led some to see in them the work of inhabitants of the planet. I am very careful not to dispute this supposition which includes nothing impossible.” Nevertheless, the observations were soon independently reported by French astronomer Nicolas Flammarion who added to the number already seen by Schiaparelli. Schiaparelli had been one of the first to observe and to document vast changes on the surface of Mars particularly the darker areas. To Flammarion he would write, “The planet is not a bare uninhabitable desert of rocks. It lives!”

            Starting in 1894 Professor Percival Lowell, and Dr. Earl C. Slipher a few years later in 1908, would begin to chart out the ‘canals’ in detail using the their new private observatory with 300 and 400mm telescopes outside of Phoenix, Arizona. Astronomers Henri Joseph Perrotin and Louis Thollon working in Nice also spotted and reported “canali.” Dr. Slipher would later become mayor of a recovering Flagstaff, Arizona from 1918 to 1920 even as he continued his observations of Mars.

            We would soon be reading of double canals first spotted by Schiaparelli in 1881. 20 of these ‘double canals’ would be reported before 1900 and even though it was originally thought to only be an optical illustration or perhaps a problem with the optics, they soon proved to be quite real. These were Martian construction projects on a vast planetary scale we could only dream of. Every once in a while a new dark area would be seen to develop and expand on the Martian surface. Overall nearly one fourth of the Martian surface is dark, mostly regulated to the northern hemisphere.

            As stated earlier it would be Schiaparelli who would draw the most detailed contemporary maps of Mars locating and naming for the first time many of the planet’s features with great accuracy. Many of the canals he would name after waterways on Earth such as Indus, Ganger, Tigris, etc. Of course there was some discussion about the existence of canals which was addressed by Schiaparelli. “Some people have been inclined to doubt the existence of the canali since they have not seen them. Yet, many of these canali are not new and have already been seen by such excellent observers as Kaiser, Lockyer, Secchi, Green, etc.”

            During the planetary opposition of 1892 astronomer William H. Pickering spotted small black spots, circular in detail, at every intersection of the canals while observing from the Harvard Observatory at Arequipa, Peru. He would call them lakes as Lowell would identify them as oases. He also found that these ‘black spots’ were located at the starting point of every major canal. Water was thought to be richly found at these oases. We could not know it at the time, but these were in fact the small, at one time occupied, areas on Mars originally built to monitor and control canal operations. Mr. Lowell would write: “Scattered over the orange-ochre groundwork of the continental regions of the planet, are any number of dark round spots. How many there may be it is not possible to state, as the better the seeing, the more of them there seem to be. In spite, however, of their great number, there is no instance of one unconnected with a canal.” He would also report, “It is, then, a system whose end and aim is the tapping of the snow-cap for the water there semi-annually let loose; then to distribute it over the planet’s face.” 

            In a paper which found a large distribution Lowell would speculate on what “peaceful” works one may find on the surface of Mars and a few thoughts on the builders of these great works. He was to say the least just a tad off on his speculations of the Martian mindset.

            “That Mars is inhabited by beings of some sort or other we may consider as certain as it is uncertain what those beings may be. Girdling their globe and stretching from pole to pole, the Martian canal system not only embraces their whole world, but is an organized entity. Each canal joins another, which in turn connects with a third, and so on over the entire surface of the planet. This continuity of construction posits a community of interest. Now, when we consider that though not so large as the Earth the world of Mars is one of 4200 miles diameter and therefore containing something like 212,000,000 of square miles, the unity of the process acquires considerable significance. The supposed vast enterprises of the Earth look small besides it. None of them but become local comparison, gigantic as they seem to us to be.” Mars was thus known to be united in some planetary form even though what these creatures may be like in form mankind through the fog of ancient history we had forgotten.

            “The first thing that is forced on us in conclusion is the necessarily intelligent and non-bellicose character of the community which could thus act as a unit throughout its globe. War is a survival among us from savage times and affects now chiefly the boyish and unthinking element of the nation. The wisest realize that there are better ways for practicing heroism and other and more certain ends of insuring the survival of the fittest. It is something people outgrow. But whether they consciously practice peace or not, nature in its evolution eventually practices it for them, and after enough of the inhabitants of a globe have killed each other’s off, the remainder must find it more advantageous to work together for the common good. Whether increasing common sense or increasing necessity was the spun that drove the Martians to this eminently sagacious state we cannot say, but it is certain that reached it they have, and equally certain that if they had not they must all die. When a planet has attained to the age of advancing decrepitude, and the remnant of its water supply resides simply in its polar caps, these can only be affectively tapped for the benefit of the inhabitants when arctic and equatorial peoples are at one. Difference of policy on the question of the all-important water supply meant nothing short of death. Isolated communities cannot there be sufficient unto themselves; they must combine to solidarity or perish.”

            “From the fact, therefore, that the reticulated canal system is an elaborate entity embracing the whole planet from one pole to the other, we have not only proof of the world-wide sagacity of its builders, but a very suggestive side-light, to the fact that only a universal necessity such as water could well be its underlying cause.”

            It would be in the late ‘90s that the American astronomer Edward E. Barnard working at the 36-inch Link Observatory telescope in the American State of California would view what he thought were impact craters including one called Huygens. He reported, “…a vast amount of detail” as well as areas he called “irregular and broken up.” To Barnard Mars was an ancient and dying world and he sadly reported his findings to the world.

            At first the public paid close attention to these new and fascinating reports, but as most other observers failed to see canali the general public soon lost interest. There was a living to be made and Earth bound problems were much closer to home so Mars and her canali would have to wait.

            It is perhaps recalled on more than one occasion, since 1890, bright and sudden flares of light had again and again been spotted by Earth observers (one was even clearly photographed) emanating from the surface of Mars. In 1894 Percival Lowell reported seeing lights on the surface of Mars. “As I was watching the planet I saw suddenly two points flash out in the midst of the polar cap. Dazzlingly bright upon the duller white background… these stars shone for a moment and then slowly disappeared.” 

            I remember the newspapers had covered these events. Large areas showing bright white cloud-like objects, which seem to fade within minutes, were seen in both the northern and southern hemispheres of the planet. They were recorded, but very few people paid any attention to them even though some of these reports eventually made their way to the popular press. Seasonal changes were also noted and reported. These were evidences that Mars was a dynamic planet and that changes did occur over short periods of time. The polar caps, known to exist on Mars for over 250 years, had proven to be dynamic; increasing and decreasing with the seasons. This was a planet where life seemed to be abundant.

            Some observers wrote that the existence of Martian cities could be revealed by the glow of their lights from such cities at night. However, because Mars orbits in a superior position around our Sun only the edges of the terminator between the light and the dark areas are ever visible from Earth since we normally are only able to see a fully luminated Martian disk. A full Martian night may never be viewed from our planet. If we spotted these cities’ lights they would have to be lit during the early morning dawn or early evening dusk periods of the Martian day. Lowell would report, “When a fairly acute eyed observer sets himself to scan the telescope disk of the planet in steady air he will all of a sudden become aware of a vision of a thread stretched across the orange areas. Gone as quickly as it came, he will instinctively doubt his own eyesight then with the same startling abruptness; the thing stands before his eyes again.”

Editor’s Note: Martian Prime leadership were well aware of Earth’s observation of canal developments but considered these limited efforts to have no military value and were no threat to Mars Prime as humans had no capability to send craft to Mars Prime.

            It was also noted the longest lasting stable environment on Mars is most likely to be a below surface one. Geological change below the surface of Mars is thought to develop at a much slower pace than on Earth for various reasons mostly related to limited tectonic and volcanic activity and much limited movement of liquid water underground. Of course at the time we were only guessing at these ‘facts.’

            It must however be said not everyone was to look upon our celestial neighbor with longing eyes. Professor Chris Whipple of Manchester University having viewed with concern the red planet noted that if an advanced civilization did indeed inhabit Mars they were not necessarily required to be friendly. With a much more advanced technology they could very well be hostile to life on other planets. They “may even have hostile plans for our future.” No one paid much attention to the good professor, after all the saying went, “there have not been any Martians invading my home town.” We all took it as just a joke.

            In ancient times Mars was recognized as one of the five ‘wanderers’ or ‘planets’ (planetes) in the night sky even though they appeared to be star like to the naked eye and by 1534 B.C.E. the ancient Egyptians were writing about this ‘gods’ reverse or retrograde motions across the heavens. By the time of the Babylonians their astronomers had calculated that this other world made 37 circuits about our common Sun to Earth’s 79. With this they expanded their mathematics to calculate the positions of all the known ‘wanderers’ in their night sky. Man was beginning to learn about the heavens above.

            In the 3^rd century B.C. it was Aristotle who first wrote that Mars was father away from Earth than the moon after he watched the red planet move behind the moon during an occultation. While in 1590 Michael Maestlin in Heidelberg, Germany, viewed the only known recorded occultation of Mars in human history by the planet Venus on 13 October of that year. In 1719 Giancomo Miraldi was able to observe both polar caps during that year’s close opposition of Earth and was able to see that they were somewhat temporal and variable in their coverage of northern and southern polar areas. And by 1809 it was possible for Honore Flaugergues to observe [discover] “yellow clouds on the Martian surface.” His was the first report of Martian dust storms which seasonally plague the Martians showing that Mars did indeed have an active atmosphere. Four years later he observed a great deal of polar ice waning indicating that a good deal of melting occurs during the Martian spring and summer. He could not have known the Martians were themselves helping nature melt the ice for transportation to their few surface as well as underground cities via their extensive network of canals, even though many of their older canals were no longer used.

            The earliest known drawing of Mars came in 1636 by Francisco Fontana working in Italy. He would write “the disk of Mars is not uniform in color (discolor), but it appears fiery in the concave [sic] part.” In 1659 Christian Huygens would sketch out the first usable map of Mars showing an identifiable feature later named Syrtis Major. It would be for William Herschel to argue Mars had seasons similar to Earth in 1784. “Mars has a considerable but moderate atmosphere. The inhabitants of Mars probably enjoy a situation similar to our own.” There was no doubt in his mind, or the minds of most 17^th and 18^th century men of science that Mars was inhabited. “Besides the permanent spots I have often noticed occasional changes in partial bright belts; and also once on a darkish one, in a pretty high latitude.”

            A much more detailed work was published as late as 1892 by French Astronomer Camille Flammarion entitled La Planete Mars et ses Conditions d’Habitabilite. In this published account of Mars the efforts of the Martians to transform the ancient surface of their cold world was detailed. Massive surface works would have been the only efforts by the Martians which could have been seen at the time – yet all of these great works were simply ignored or downplayed by governments more interested in terrestrial matters than off world events. Flammarion would later turn his efforts towards the occult and how ghosts related to things of life and the future. He was most certain however there were in fact “no Martian ghosts anywhere upon our Earth as far as he could ascertain!”

            That year also saw the publication of F. Griffith’s The Inscriptions of the Pyramid of Medum. This work published in London reported several references to Mars and Martians inscribed on the pyramid yet all were ignored by “educated people.” An even earlier work published in 1883 by W.M.F. Petrie titled The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh had clear references about some type of contact between humans and beings on Mars.

            You may recall in the years just before the Martians brought their particular form of total destruction to our solar world there had been many events on Earth as well as on Mars that should have given us warning that we faced great danger. We all missed, ignored, or misinterpreted each and every clue especially those from the 1890s that now in hindsight seem so clear. I, as did many others, simply laughed them off – “Martians indeed, such fanciful rubbish.” We were such arrogant fools as more and more unknown aerial objects took command of our skies even as our own skies were denied to men. Few were to ask: If not humans then who or what was flying over our cities and farms? And what did they want from Earth? The answer would come soon enough.

UNIDENTIFIED AERIAL OBJECTS

            Since ancient times men have reported strange and unexplained aerial objects at times called angels, sky gods, dragons breathing fire, flying carpets, golden chariots or even glowing shields all over the Earth. None of the ancient civilizations had missed seeing such events, much recorded in ancient records. As a species humanity has been encountering “others” for as long as we have been able to record such events and probably for much longer than that, perhaps since the very dawn of mankind as we stared out from our protective caves. 

            It will be remembered the first written description of an unidentified aerial object was recorded on a 3,400-year-old Egyptian papyrus fragment (15^th century B.C.E.) which spoke of the “Annals of Thutmose III”. The ancient papyrus reported one night “fire circles which shone more in the sky than the brightness of the Sun were seen.” As the ‘circles’ rose to the southern sky they sent down “fishes and winged creatures – a marvel never before known since the foundation of the land. Now after some days had passed, these things became more numerous in the skies than ever.” In response pharaoh Thutmose III ordered a great burning of incense to commence. The discs were said to be “metallic with a foul smell” hence the need for much incense burning. There was also an ominous note from the scribes that a great many people from one of the local villages had turned up missing after a dense green fog had been seen! “And what happened was ordered by the pharaoh to be written in the annals of the House of Life so that it be remembered for ever.”

            These craft were long known since before the dawn of written history, but the large number of mysterious aerial objects observed around the world in the 1890s (and even earlier in 1887 when airship reports began along the east coast of the United States) clearly marked these events as something different – something very different. These were not imagined ghosts or demons, nor were they the ramblings of a night of hard drinking. These were unidentified airships, solid, real, big and governments around the world put a great deal of effort into completely ignoring these reports, many of which could easily have been referred to as actual attacks. I had once held the view that seeing one of these unidentified objects might be something exciting to look forward to. I no longer hold that view. 

            We were being closely watched and more, by destructive intelligences we could barely perceive and perhaps some we cannot. In the great blackness of space they had looked with their powerful electronic telescopes upon a lonely blue dot; a water filled oasis of life, and they craved every inch of its surface for their own. 

            The people of Earth were told that these events were nothing to fear and in fact many governments reported that these craft did not even exist. That was a governmental lie so deliciously well told by men who knew that most people still believed what their governments told them. Official governmental ridicule backed by a complacent and at times a conspiratorial Press ruled the day, and very few would stand to challenge that view. That particular type of courage was not often found, yet there were a few brave souls who would not be silenced. A few of the more insistent lost their lives and many more lost their freedoms or simply vanished. Such is the way by which power and control is held sway.

            We now know governments became well aware of many of these incidents, some with deadly results, in the decades before the Martians came, and even though people of education and training were amongst those making detailed reports most were laughed at and ridiculed. When people began to disappear along with many different types of farm and ranch animals governments did pay attention, but no ‘official’ efforts to understand what was really going on were ever undertaken. “It was all in our imaginations” went the official line and the powers to be were determined to keep it that way. Not one nation put their military on alert. No government on Earth put together a team of experts to examine these events. There were of course many other events competing for our collective attention at the time as is always the case. History by its very nature can never stand still. Nevertheless, there seemed to be an almost “wait and see” attitude with the official hope that these strange sightings would somehow go away. As we all know now they did not, nor did the fear.

To Be Continued….