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where magic floated in the air and fantasy novels were simply true accounts of their authors’ experiences. Is that what Serviss was saying? Was that nondescript little man guiding him, like the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, to his warren, where Wells would enter a world in which anything was possible? A world ruled over by a far more imaginative God than the current one? Yet that reality did not exist, it could not exist, much as it seemed to him now the most natural thing in the world.
    “Are you afraid?” Serviss inquired, surprised. “Ah, I see, perhaps this is all too much for you, George. Perhaps you prefer your monsters to stay safely within the confines of your imagination, where the most they can do is send a shiver down the spines of your readers. Perhaps you haven’t the courage to face them in reality, off the page.”
    “Of course I have, Garrett,” Wells retorted, irritated at Serviss’s presumption. “It is just that—”
    “Don’t worry, George. I understand, I really do.” Serviss tried to console him. “Seeing a Martian is a terrifying experience. It’s one thing to write about them, and quite another to—”
    “Of course I can face them in reality, confound it!” Wells cried, leaping unsteadily to his feet. “We shall go to the museum this instant, Garrett, and you can show me your Martian!”
    Serviss looked up at him with amusement, then rose to his feet with the same gusto.
    “All right, George, it’s up to you!” he roared, barely able to stand up straight. “Waiter, the bill! And be quick about it, my friend and I have an appointment with a creature from the stars!”
    Wells tried to dissuade him from another outburst, but Serviss had already turned toward the other tables.
    “Does anyone here wish to accompany us? Does anyone else wish to see a Martian?” he declared to the astonished customers, spreading his arms. “If so, come with me, and I’ll show you a bona fide inhabitant of the planet Mars!”
    “Shut your mouth, tosspot!” someone bawled from the back of the room.
    “Go home and sleep it off, leave us to eat in peace!” another man suggested.
    “You see, George?” Serviss said, disheartened, hurling a handful of coins onto the table and weaving his way over to the door, head held high. “Nobody wants to know, nobody. People prefer living in ignorance. Well, let them!” He paused at the door, jabbing a finger at the customers as he tried not to fall over. “Go on with your miserable lives, fools! Stay in your rotten reality!”
    Wells noticed a few burly looking characters making as if to get up, with what seemed like a none-too-friendly attitude. He leapt forward and began wrestling Serviss’s skinny frame out of the pub, gesturing to the locals to keep calm. Out in the street, he stopped the first cab he saw, pushed Serviss inside, and shouted their destination to the driver. The American fell sideways onto the seat. He remained in that position for a while, his head propped against the window, grinning foolishly at Wells, who had sat down opposite him in an equally graceless posture. The jolting of the coach as it went round Green Park sobered them slightly.They began laughing over the spectacle they had created in the pub, and, still fueled by drink, spent the rest of the journey inventing crazy theories as to why beings from Mars, or from some other planet, would want to visit Earth. The carriage pulled up in the Cromwell Road in front of a magnificent Romanesque Revival structure whose façade was decorated with friezes of plants and animals. Wells and Serviss got out and tottered toward the entrance, while the driver stared after them aghast. The man’s name was Neal Hamilton, he was approximately forty years of age, and his life would never be the same again. For he had just overheard those two respectable, sophisticated-looking gentlemen confirm that life had been brought to Earth in vast flying machines by intelligent beings from outer