The Martian War by Kevin J. Anderson Read Free Book Online

odd mixtures of chemicals and smoke, heard assistants chattering, saw chalkboards covered with equations. Intent men stood before designs and theorems, arguing over various consequences and derivations.
    Huxley gestured proudly. “Mr. Wells, in this institute we have quietly gathered the greatest minds in the British Empire to pursue a high calling. We have chemists, engineers, mathematicians, biologists, architects. Not even Socrates ever encountered such a cadre of clever brains.”
    Wells stood overwhelmed, but he remembered Huxley’s admonition to be articulate when he spoke. “But … why am I here, sir? I took only a single course from you, years ago. Surely, I could not have made such a lasting impression.”
    “Ah, I’ve enjoyed your interesting articles in the Pall Mall Gazette, Mr. Wells. Many are simple diversions, but others contain glimmers of true insight. I wanted your objective view about a certain important matter.”
    Wells cleared his throat. “What matter is that, sir?”
    Huxley placed a strong hand on his thin, bony shoulder. “Very soon, we will hold a momentous conference here, a secret symposium.” He met Wells with his intense dark gaze. “The fate of the world is at stake.”
    * * *
    With a boyish delight, Huxley continued to show him the technological marvels quietly being developed behind the Institute’s closed doors. Wells felt as if he had followed Lewis Carroll’s Alice down the rabbit hole.
    As the professor made his way down the halls, however, Wells noted that the old man’s movements had a slow fragility. His joints obviously gave him great pain, and his breathing had a labored quality. Wells remembered Huxley’s charisma and stentorian voice as he lectured about the wonders of biology or scoffed at the persistent challenges to Darwin’s theory of evolution.
    Wells peered through broad hall windows into research rooms filled with experiments in progress. Voltaic battery piles flashed electrical arcs; purple, brown, and green smokes rose from various beakers. They paused to admire a long, bubbling train of distillation tubes and fractionating cylinders. “This all reminds me of Gulliver’s Travels —the third section, where the scientists of Laputa levitate their flying island by using a lodestone of prodigious size.”
    Huxley frowned. “This is deadly serious work, Mr. Wells, not a satirical scheme to extract sunlight from cucumbers. Our laboratory facilities are the finest in existence. Our equipmentis superior even to the best Prussian instruments. We will have to surpass the Germans, Wells, if we are to defeat them in the coming war.”
    “War? War with the German Empire?”
    Huxley cocked his bushy eyebrows. “Ah, surely you can read the newspapers and make obvious extrapolations?”
    The recent unification of thirty-nine German states, including Austria and Prussia, had created the Second Reich, adding more strength to the historically aggressive Empire. This had raised concerns across Europe, especially considering the Reich’s direction under the firm statesmanship of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. Then, four years ago, not long after the beginning of his reign, the new Kaiser Wilhelm II had ousted Bismarck, and many in Britain had heaved a sigh of relief.
    Now, the British Empire was apparently making contingency plans, looking to the future and preparing for the worst eventuality. Wells was embarrassed that he had not previously grasped the seriousness of the situation.
    Huxley explained, “When setting up this secret portion of the Imperial Institute, Queen Victoria told me to let no possibility go unexplored, no idea unconsidered, no possibility ignored. Without restrictions, our chemistry labs are developing new explosives and exotic materials.” He pointed to the heavy vault doors of yet another facility. “Behold our hermetically sealed germ laboratory where microbiologists study virulent diseases such as the bubonic plague and cholera.”
    Wells peered