THE EVE OF THE WAR
Musical Version of The War Of The Worlds
Jeff Wayne
The Coming of the Martians
The Eve Of The War
Journalist: No one would have believed, in the last years of the nineteenth century, that
human affairs were being watch from the timeless worlds of space. No one could have dreamed
we were being scrutinized, as someone with a microscope studies creatures that swarm and
multiply in a drop of water. Few men even considered the possibility of life on other planets
and yet, across the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to our regarded this Earth
with envious eyes, and slowly and surely, they drew their plans against us.
At midnite on the twelfth of August, a huge mass of luminous gas erupted from Mars and sped
towards Earth. Across two hundred million miles of void, invisibly hurtling towards us, came
the first of the missiles that were to bring so much calamity to Earth. As I watched, there
was another jet of gas. it was another missle, starting on its way.
And that's how it was for the next the next ten nights. A flare, spurting out from Mars -
bright green, drawing a green mist behind it - a beautiful, but somehow disturbing sight.
Ogilvy, the astronomer, assured me we were in no danger. he was convinced there could be no
living thing on that remote, forbidding planet.
"The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one," he said.
"The changes of anything coming from Mars are a million to one-but still they come!"
Journalist: Then came the night the first missile approached Earth. It was thought to be an
ordinary falling star, but the next day there was a huge crater in the middle of the Common,
and Ogilvy came to examine what lay there: a cylinder, thirty yards across, glowing hot...
and with faint sounds of movement coming from with.
Suddenly the top began moving, rotating, unscrewing, and Ogilvy feared there was a man inside,
trying to escape. He rushed to the cylinder, but the intense heat stopped him before he could
burn himself on the metal.
"The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one," he said.
"The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one - but still they come!"
It seems totally incredible to me now that everyone spent that evening as though it were just
like any other.
From the railway station came the sound of shunting trains, ringing the rumbling, softened
almost into melody by the distance.
It all seemed so safe and tranquil.
