The Eve of the War
No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own. Across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.
You are a writer living in Woking. It is a quiet summer evening. Your friend Ogilvy, the astronomer, invites you to the observatory. Through the telescope, you see a reddish flash at the edge of Mars. It is a missile, hurtling through the void towards Earth.
"The chances against anything manlike on Mars are a million to one," Ogilvy assures you. But the next night, another flash appears. And then, the first falling star streaks over Winchester.