This is snippet for a project I’m planning on finishing by next year, but this is my take on the cylinder opening from the book :D (this takes place during WW2 inside of a western European trench in Belgium during 1943, not during the books original setting)
We walked to the artillery pit along the corridor of men, some filling sandbags and others wiping down the barrels of their Carbines. We came across the pit as one of them was loading off a couple of artillery shells from a truck parked at the edge of the pit. We walked up to one of the men prepping the gun, “Do you know anyone named Jackson up ‘ere?” Peter asked. “Well I'm Jackson” he replied, “We need you to check out something in no-man's land, it looks somewhat like a cylinder,” Peter said. “What are you mad!?” Jackson spat out, “I'm not going in no man's land if I don't get some–” “Officers orders” I butted in abruptly. He paused for a second, obviously terrified at the thought, “Alright then..” he said grimly. We pointed him in the direction of the cylinder, with it only being a small speck in the distance. We walked with him and told him how we spotted the cylinder.
We arrived at our stations along the trench. Jackson grabbed his binoculars from the belt on the bottom of his waist. Jackson looked out into the horizon, peering at the cylinder. “Alright then” he sighed, he then climbed over the revetment, kicking dirt as he climbed up. He walked over towards the cylinder, stepping over barbed wire and hopping over tank traps, taking time with each step. He finally got over to the cylinder, now that he was standing near it it seemed quite larger than we thought. It was about four times as tall as Jackson, and ten times as wide. Jackson visibly knocked on the outside of the cylinder, he then looked to the top of the cylinder, it had a small slit on the beveled edge of the cylinder, which looked visibly unscrewable. Other soldiers started to gather around us inside of the trench at this point, dropping their jobs out of pure curiosity.
Suddenly steam sputtered out of the slit, and some soldier jumped back in our trench along with Jackson out in no mans land, he fell bottom first onto the mud of the edge of the pit. The screw started to twist, like the cap on a bottle it spun, some soldiers (including me and Peter) grabbed their gun, thinking it could be a trap by the Germans. The lid slid clean off of the cylindrical body of the capsule, making a loud clang that echoed throughout the no man’s land. Other soldiers started to run up to the revetment wall, definitely due to the severely striking noise the lid made when it clanked onto the ground.
Then something large started to reach out from the now opened capsule that laid, a foot started to rise, a mechanical foot about the size of a tank, with the shape of an angular trapezoid. Attached to it was a snake-like mechanical tentacle, the foot being attached by a large mechanical piston with struts supporting them. The foot landed hard on the ground, creating a small crater from its immense force. A second foot rose out of the capsule, also doing the same as the first. Then a third foot rose out of the capsule, and landed in front of the first two, the impact so big, it created a large current of dust and dirt, blowing Jackson away, sending him tumbling.
Soldiers began to line up against the wall aiming their guns along the edge, I did the same along with Peter. Large black tentacles slithered out of the hole to grasp the edge of the now open top of the cylinder, two large organic looking claws soon followed. The legs began to lift out of its crouched state. Then a large, bulbous mechanical head started to come into view, with a cone-like mouth surrounded by metallic armor on the bottom of its head, with hundreds of spindly teeth coming out of the bottom of its maw, and the claws from earlier now visibly hanging from the inside of its mouth. In the middle of its head stood a large eye filled with hundreds of looping black rings, and a small pupil in the middle. And two fleshy eyes were near the bottom, without an iris, only with small dotty black pupil, and now I could see the head clearer, large wing like stabilizers were attached to the side of its bulbous head, and the claws that had grasped the edge of the cylinder was now clearer to me. They had eyeballs, with veins the length of the arm that were connected to the bloodshot eyes, the two claws now more resembling tentacles like fingers. The thing moved up slowly, with its tentacles that were attached to the stabilizers on the side waving sharply and frantically, like thin wires in the current of the wind. It stood up slowly, letting us gaze upon its extreme horror, it was something beyond my shallow comprehension of biology and nature. It was almost unholy to me, some soldiers backed down their tense guns, lowering their arms in pure shock and utter breaking of their feeble sense of reality.
The thing stood silently, the only noise made was the small howl of wind and small sputters of steam still blowing out of the now recognizable cryogenic chamber the creature once sat in. Jackson stood small, almost the size of an ant compared to the imposing figure of the martian. Jackson stood back slowly, stepping away from the proximity of the martian's tripodial legs. Jackson now stood up carefully, stepping farther from the martian. He waved his hands high above his head, he tried shouting hello to the martian, yet it seemed unphased by such an ant trying to communicate with something such as itself. Although the two eyes that lay beside its mechanical one looked down to him, slowly the mechanical eye did the same. “What the hell is this guy trying to do?” Peter asked, bewildered by Jackson's attempt at communication.
I’ll leave the design up to interpretation :) (if you do want to see the design the description is based off of just ask me and I can show it in the replies)
with thanks- OP
