Then the first falling star arrived. It happened early in the morning. People saw a line of fire in the sky. One man said it left a green line behind it for a few seconds. A scientist said the fire fell to earth about one hundred miles away.
I was at home and I was writing in my room. My windows were open to the sky because I loved to look at the stars. But I did not see the falling star. It fell to earth while I was sitting there. Some people said it made a hissing sound as it moved. I heard nothing.
No one looked for the object that night. But Ogilvy saw the shooting star. Ogilvy thought it was a meteorite (a large rock that falls from space). Ogilvy went to the common (a large area of open land) early the next morning. He found the object near the sand-pits.
The object made a giant hole in the ground. It threw sand and stones everywhere. You could see the piles of sand from a mile away. The grass was on fire and there was blue smoke in the air.
The Thing lay mostly under the sand. It hit a tree and broke it into small pieces. The part he could see looked like a huge cylinder (an object shaped like a long tube). It was about thirty yards wide. It was covered in a thick, gray crust.
Ogilvy was surprised because the object was not round. Most rocks from space are round. The object was still very hot from its trip through the air. Ogilvy could not go near it. He heard a noise inside the cylinder.
He thought the noise happened because the metal was cooling down. Ogilvy stood alone at the edge of the pit. The morning was very quiet and the sun was warm. There were no birds and there was no wind.
Then Ogilvy noticed something strange. The gray crust on the end of the cylinder was falling off. It fell onto the sand like rain. A large piece fell with a loud noise. This noise surprised Ogilvy very much.
Ogilvy was afraid, but he went down into the pit. He wanted to see the Thing more clearly. He saw that the top of the cylinder was moving. It was turning very slowly. Then he heard a scraping sound and the top moved again.
Ogilvy realized the cylinder was hollow. Someone or something was unscrewing the top from the inside. "Good heavens!" Ogilvy said. He thought there were men inside the object. He thought they were too hot and wanted to escape.
He remembered the lights he saw on Mars. He tried to help turn the top, but the metal was too hot. It burned his hands. He stood there for a moment and then he ran to the town.
It was about six o’clock in the morning. He saw a man with a wagon, but the man did not listen. Then he saw a man at a pub. That man thought Ogilvy was crazy and tried to lock him in a room.
Finally, Ogilvy saw Henderson. Henderson was a journalist (a person who writes for a newspaper). Ogilvy called to Henderson over a fence. He told Henderson about the shooting star. Henderson thought it was just a rock from space.
But Ogilvy said it was a hollow tube with something inside. Henderson was surprised and dropped his tool. He put on his coat and went into the road. The two men ran back to the common together.
The cylinder was still there. The noise inside the cylinder stopped. There was a thin line of bright metal at the top. They heard a quiet hissing sound as air moved in or out.
They listened and hit the metal with a stick. No one answered from inside. Ogilvy and Henderson thought the people inside were dead. They could not do anything to help.
The two men were dirty and excited. They ran through the streets in the morning sun to find help. People were just opening their shops and windows. Henderson went to the train station.
He wanted to telegraph (send a message using a wire) the news to London. By eight o'clock, many people went to the common. They wanted to see the "dead men from Mars." I heard the news from my newspaper boy. I was very surprised and I went to the sand-pits immediately.