A giant, three-legged fighting machine with glowing eyes and metallic tentacles stands amidst smoke and lightning in a desolate, stormy landscape. A lone soldier faces it.

The fighting machines are described as having three tall, articulated legs, with a grouping of long, whip-like metallic tentacles hanging beneath the central body, Atop the main body a hood-like head houses a sole Martian operator. In the novel, the armaments of the fighting machines include a directed-energy incendiary weapon fired from a camera-shaped device held by an articulated arm. They also had gun-like tubes which could deploy a poisonous gas.[3] The fighting machines could also discharge steam through nozzles that dissipates the black smoke, which then settles as an inert, powdery substance. The metallic tentacles, which hang below the main fighting machine body, are used as probes and for grasping objects. The novel is indeterminate regarding the height of the fighting machines; as in the novel, a newspaper article describes them to be more than 100 feet See more