No one would have believed, in the last years
of the nineteenth century, that human affairs were being
watched from the timeless worlds of space.

No one could have dreamed we were being [bad word]  as
someone with a microscope studies creatures that swarm
and multiply in a drop of water. Few men even considered 
the possibility of life on other planets and yet, across
the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours
regarded this Earth with envious eyes, 
and slowly and surely, they drew their plans against us.

At midnight on the twelfth of August, a huge mass of
luminous gas [bad word] from Mars and sped towards Earth.
Across two hundred million miles of void, invisibly hurtling
towards us, came the first of the missiles that were to
bring so much calamity to Earth. As I watched, there was
another jet of gas. It was another missile, starting on its way.

And that's how it was for the next ten nights. flare,
spurting out from Mars - bright green,
drawing a green mist behind it - a beautiful, but
somehow disturbing sight. Ogilvy,
the astronomer, assured me we were in no danger. He was
convinced there could be no
living thing on that remote, forbidding planet.