The Map of the Sky Read Online Free

of defeating the Martian technology I described?”
    Serviss shrugged, unable to reply.
    “In any event, I felt it was my duty to offer an alternative, a ray ofhope . . . ,” Serviss finally muttered, contemplating with a faint smile the crowd in the pub. “Like any other man here, I’d like to think that if someday we were invaded from the sky, we’d have some hope of survival.”
    “Perhaps we would,” Wells said, softening. “But my mistrust of Man is too great, Garrett. If there was a way of defeating the Martians, I’m sure it would be no thanks to us. Who knows, perhaps help would come from the most unexpected quarter. Besides, why does it worry you so much? Do you really believe our neighbors from Mars are going to invade us?”
    “Of course I do, George,” Serviss replied solemnly. “Although I suppose it’ll happen after the year two thousand. First we have to deal with the automatons.”
    “The automatons? Oh yes, of course . . . the automatons.”
    “But there’s no question in my mind that sooner or later they’ll invade,” Serviss insisted. “Don’t you believe, as Lowell maintains in his book, that the canals on Mars were built by an intelligent life-form?”
    Wells had read Percival Lowell’s book Mars, in which he set out this idea; in fact he had used it to substantiate his own novel, but it was a long way from there to believing in life on Mars.
    “I don’t suppose the purpose of the many millions of planets in the universe is simply to create a pretty backdrop,” replied Wells, who considered discussions about the existence of life on other planets a pointless exercise. “Nor is it unreasonable to imagine that hundreds of them probably enjoy the conditions essential for supporting life. However, if Mars is anything to go by . . .”
    “And they don’t necessarily need oxygen or water,” Serviss observed excitedly. “Here on our planet we have creatures, like anaerobic bacteria, that can live without oxygen. That would already double the number of planets able to support life. There could be more than a hundred thousand civilizations out there that are more advanced than ours, George. And I’m sure generations to come will discover abundant and unexpected life on other planets, although we won’t live to see it, and they’llcome to accept with resignation that they aren’t the only intelligent, let alone the oldest, life-form in the Cosmos.”
    “I agree, Garrett,” Wells conceded, “but I am also convinced that such ‘civilizations’ would have nothing in common with ours. We would be as hard put to understand them as a dog would the workings of a steam engine. For example, they may have no desire to explore space at all, while we gaze endlessly at the stars and wonder if we are alone in the universe, as Galileo himself did.”
    “Yes, although he was careful not to do it too audibly, for fear of upsetting the church,” Serviss quipped.
    A smile fluttered across Wells’s lips, and he discovered that the drink had relaxed his facial muscles. Serviss had extracted a smile from him fair and square, and there it must stay.
    “Of course, what we can’t deny is Man’s eagerness to communicate with supposed creatures from outer space,” Serviss said, after managing to make two fresh pints brimming with beer appear on the table, as if out of nowhere. “Do you remember the attempts by that German mathematician to reflect light from the sun onto other planets with a device he invented called a heliotrope? What was the fellow’s name again? Grove?”
    “Grau. Or Gauss,” Wells ventured.
    “That’s it, Gauss. His name was Karl Gauss.”
    “He also suggested planting an enormous right-angled triangle of pine trees on the Russian steppe, so that observers from other worlds would know there were beings on Earth capable of understanding the Pythagorean theorem,” Wells recalled.
    “Yes, that’s right,” Serviss added. “He claimed no geometrical shape could