"Herbert George Wells. The War of the Worlds" - читать интересную книгу автора

somewhere on the common between Horsell, Ottershaw, and
Woking, rose early with the idea of finding it. Find it he did,
soon after dawn, and not far from the sand pits. An enormous
hole had been made by the impact of the projectile, and the
sand and gravel had been flung violently in every direction
over the heath, forming heaps visible a mile and a half away.
The heather was on fire eastward, and a thin blue smoke
rose against the dawn.

The Thing itself lay almost entirely buried in sand, amidst
the scattered splinters of a fir tree it had shivered to frag-
ments in its descent. The uncovered part had the appearance
of a huge cylinder, caked over and its outline softened by a
thick scaly dun-coloured incrustation. It had a diameter of
about thirty yards. He approached the mass, surprised at
the size and more so at the shape, since most meteorites
are rounded more or less completely. It was, however, still
so hot from its flight through the air as to forbid his near
approach. A stirring noise within its cylinder he ascribed to
the unequal cooling of its surface; for at that time it had
not occurred to him that it might be hollow.

He remained standing at the edge of the pit that the
Thing had made for itself, staring at its strange appearance,
astonished chiefly at its unusual shape and colour, and
dimly perceiving even then some evidence of design in its
arrival. The early morning was wonderfully still, and the sun,
just clearing the pine trees towards Weybridge, was already
warm. He did not remember hearing any birds that morning,
there was certainly no breeze stirring, and the only sounds
were the faint movements from within the cindery cylinder.
He was all alone on the common.

Then suddenly he noticed with a start that some of the
grey clinker, the ashy incrustation that covered the meteorite,
was falling off the circular edge of the end. It was dropping
off in flakes and raining down upon the sand. A large piece
suddenly came off and fell with a sharp noise that brought
his heart into his mouth.

For a minute he scarcely realised what this meant, and,
although the heat was excessive, he clambered down into
the pit close to the bulk to see the Thing more clearly. He
fancied even then that the cooling of the body might account
for this, but what disturbed that idea was the fact that the
ash was falling only from the end of the cylinder.

And then he perceived that, very slowly, the circular top
of the cylinder was rotating on its body. It was such a
gradual movement that he discovered it only through noticing