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eBook Category: Alternate History/Science Fiction
eBook Description: It's the end of the nineteenth century, and astronomer Percival Lowell is smarting from the ridicule heaped upon him for theorizing that Mars is covered with canals built by the locals. To prove he's right, Lowell signals the Red Planet with a network of oil-flamed canals dug in the Sahara. The venture is a success: Martian spacecraft are seen heading for Earth, and a reporter named Herbert George Wells is about to get a scoop for the ages.

eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com, Published: War of the Worlds: Global Dispatches, ed. Kevin J. Anderson, 1996
Fictionwise Release Date: February 2002

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Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [34 KB] , ePub (EPUB) [30 KB] , Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [19 KB] , Portable Document Format (PDF) [84 KB] , Palm Doc (PDB) [21 KB] , Microsoft Reader (LIT) [55 KB] , Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [93 KB] , hiebook (KML) [74 KB] , Sony Reader (LRF) [50 KB] , iSilo (PDB) [17 KB] , Mobipocket (PRC) [22 KB] , Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [50 KB] , OEBFF Format (IMP) [32 KB]
Words: 5762
Reading time: 16-23 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Portable Document Format (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

Under the sweltering heat of the Sahara, Percival Lowell stood beside his own tent at the center of the camp and reveled in the clamor of his vast construction site. The excavations extended beyond the vanishing point of the flat desert horizon. Thousands of sweating workers--who worked for mere pennies a day--moved like choreographed machinery as they dug monumental trenches according to Lowell's commands, scribing a long line in the sand.

Lowell had seen the same on Mars, long canals, straight lines extending thousands of miles across the rusted desert. His own observations had absolutely convinced him that such markings must be indicative of surface life on a dying world.

Other astronomers claimed not to see the network of canals, that the lines on the disk of Mars were not there. It reminded him of the trial of Galileo, when the high church officials and Pope Paul V had refused to see the moons of Jupiter through the astronomer's "optick glass," denying the evidence of their own eyes. Lowell couldn't decide if his own contemporaries were similarly bull-headed, or just plain blind.

He took a deep breath, ignoring the pounding sun. The fiery heat and dust and petroleum stench practically curled the hairs in his mustache. With recently washed hands, he fished inside the front pocket of his cream jacket and withdrew his special pair of pince-nez, with lenses made of red stained glass. Through the copper-oxide tint, he could look out at the blistering and dead Sahara, seeing instead the scarlet sands of Mars. Mars.

How could one stand out here in the desert and not intuitively understand why the Martians would need to construct an extravagant set of canals to transport precious water from the melting ice caps down to their ancient cities? Water covered sixty percent of the Earth's surface, while Mars remained one vast planetary wasteland. The Martians' magnificent canals had endured as their world grew parched and withered with age, as their civilization mummified. By this time, those once-glorious minds must be desperate, ready to grasp at any hope.

Lowell strolled out along the well-packed path from the encampment to the long ditch his army of workers had dug in the shifting sands. Compared to what the Martians had accomplished, it seemed a child's futile effort, and it certainly wouldn't endure long--but then Lowell's canal was not required to.

It must remain only long enough to send a signal.

If Ogilvy's calculations were correct, Lowell had little time. He prayed his Bedouin workers would be fast enough. But he vowed nothing would deter him. After all, he had built his great Arizona observatory in a mere six weeks from groundbreaking to first light. He could certainly handle digging a ditch, even if it was ten miles long out in the middle of the Sahara.