Jeff Wayne & Justin Hayward The Eve Of The War Lyrics

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

No one could have dreamed we were being scrutinised, 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 s___e, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded the Earth with envious eyes...

And slowly and surely, they drew their plans against us.

At midnight, on the 12th of August, a huge mass of luminous gas erupted 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. A flare, spurting out from Mars. Bright green, drawing a green mist behind it; a beautiful, but somehow disturbing sight. Ogilby, the astronomer, a__ured me we were in no danger. He was convinced there could be no living thing on that remote, forbidding planet.

The Astronomer

Chorus
The chances of anything coming from Mars
Are a million to one, he said (ahh, ahh)
The chances of anything coming from Mars
Are a million to one, but still, they come...

Then came the night the first missile approached Earth. It was thought to be an ordinary falling star, but next day there was a huge crater in the middle of the common, and Ogilby came to examine what lay there. A cylinder, thirty yards across, glowing hot, with faint sounds of movement coming from within. Suddenly the top began moving: rotating, unscrewing; and Ogilby feared there was a man inside trying to escape. He rushed to the cylinder but the intense heat stopped him before he could burn himself on the metal.

Chorus
The chances of anything coming from Mars
Are a million to one, he said (ahh, ahh)
The chances of anything coming from Mars
Are a million to one, but still, they come...
Yes, the chances of anything coming from Mars
Are a million to one, he said (ahh, ahh)
The chances of anything coming from Mars
Are a million to one, but still, they come...