Seen nearer, the Thing was incredibly strange, with a ringing metallic pace, and long, flexible, glittering tentacles swinging and rattling about its strange body.... Behind the main body was a huge mass of white metal like a gigantic fisherman’s basket, and puffs of green smoke squirted out from the joints of the limbs as the monster swept by me. And in an instant it was gone.—Book 1, Chap. 10, ¶15

H.G.
Wells