The
EARTH-TUBE
By Gawain Edwards
Afterword by Ron Miller
G. Edward Pendray, one of the founding-fathers of modern rocketry and spaceflight, wrote science fiction under the name "Gawain Edwards". In this epic novel he tells how a mysterious Asian nation attempts to conquer the world through super-science and a tunnel bored through the center of the earth. Includes an historical introductory essay by Ron Miller.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
eISBN: 978-1-61824-999-9
Copyright © 2013 by Ron Miller
Cover art by: Ron Miller
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.
Electronic version by Baen Books
Originally published in 1929
The Ron Miller Science Fiction Classics Collection
PART I: THE CONQUEST OF SPACE
The Archeology of Space Travel
(space travel books from the 18th and early 19th centuries)
The Life and Astonishing Adventures of John Daniel (1751), Ralph Morris, illustrated
Voyage to the Moon (1827), George Tucker
Journeys to the Moon (includes "The Moon Hoax" by Richard Adams Locke, "The Unparalleled Adventures of Hans Pfaall" by Edgar Allan Poe and "Journey...to the newly discovered Planet Georgium Sidus" by "Vivenair", illustrated
Trip to the Moon, Lucian of Samosata
Iter Lunaire (1703), David Russen
A Voyage to Cacklogallinia (1727), "Samuel Brunt"
Gulliver Joi (1851), Elbert Perce, illustrated
The Consolidator (1705), Daniel Defoe
Trips to the Moon
Daybreak (1896), James Cowan, illustrated
The Conquest of the Moon (1889), Andre Laurie, illustrated
Drowsy (1917), J.A. Mitchell, illustrated
The Moon Conquerors (1930), R.H. Roman
A History of a Voyage to the Moon (1864), "Chrysostom Trueman"
The Moon Colony (1937), William Dixon Bell, illustrated by Ron Miller
To the Moon and Back in Ninety Hours (1922), John Young Brown, illustrated
Pioneers of Space (1949), George Adamski
A Christmas Dinner With the Man in the Moon (1880), illustrated
Flights to and from Mars
Doctor Omega (1906), Arnould Goupin (translated by Ron Miller), illustrated
To Mars via the Moon (1911), Mark Wicks, illustrated
A Plunge Into Space (1890), Robert Cromie
A Trip to Mars (1909), Fenton Ash, illustrated
War of the Worlds (includes The Crystal Egg and The Things That Live On Mars), H.G. Wells. Illustrated
Gulliver of Mars (1905), Edwin Arnold
Across the Zodiac (1880), Percy Greg
Journeys to Other Worlds
The Moon-Maker (includes The Man Who Rocked the Earth) (1916), Arthur Train and Robert Wood
A Trip to Venus (includes "Daybreak on the Moon") (1897), John Munro
A Honeymoon in Space (1900), George Griffith, illustrated
The Brick Moon (includes "On Vesta" by K.E. Tsiolkovsky) (1869), E.E. Hale
A Columbus of Space (1894), Garrett Serviss, illustrated
Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven (1909), Mark Twain
Zero to Eighty (1937), "Akkad Pseudoman" (E.F. Northrup)
Aleriel (Voice from Another World, 1874 and Letters from the Planets, 1883), W.S. Lach-Szyrma, illustrated
A Journey in Other Worlds (1894), J. J. Astor. Illustrated
Deutsche im Weltall
(Germans in Space)
By Rocket to the Moon (1931), Otto Willi Gail, illustrated
The Shot Into Infinity (1925), Otto Willi Gail, illustrated
The Stone From the Moon (1926), Otto Willi Gail, illustrated
Between Earth and Moon (1930), Otfrid von Hanstein, illustrated
Distant Worlds (1932), Friedrich Mader, illustrated
A Daring Flight to Mars (1931), Max Valier
Space Travel for Junior Space Cadets
Through Space to Mars (1910), "Roy Rockwood" (Howard R. Garis)
Lost on the Moon (1911)), "Roy Rockwood" (Howard R. Garis)
Rocket Riders Across the Ice (1933), Howard R. Garis, illustrated
Rocket Riders in Stormy Seas (1933), Howard R. Garis, illustrated
Rocket Riders in the Air (1934), Howard R. Garis, illustrated
Adrift in the Stratosphere (1937), A.M. Low, illustrated
Jules Verne
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne, translated and edited by Ron Miller. Illustrated
A Journey to the Center of the Earth, translated, annotated and edited by Ron Miller. Illustrated
Off on a Comet!, Jules Verne, edited by Ron Miller, illustrated
From the Earth to the Moon (includes Around the Moon), Jules Verne, translated and edited by Ron Miller. Illustrated
The Purchase of the North Pole, edited by Ron Miller, illustrated
Science Fiction by Gaslight
The End of Books (1884), Octave Uzanne, illustrated by Albert Robida
Under the Sea to the North Pole (1898), Pierre Mael, illustrated
Penguin Island (1908), Anatole France, illustrated by Frank C. Pape
The Crystal City Under the Sea (1896), Andre Laurie, illustrated
The Earth-Tube (1929), Gawain Edwards (G. Edward Pendray)
PART II: FIREBRANDS OF SCIENCE FICTION
Heroines
Three Go Back (1932), J. Leslie Mitchell
The Flying Legion (1920), George Allen England, illustrated
The Island of Captain Sparrow (1928), S. Fowler Wright
Eve’s Diary (1906), Mark Twain, illustrated
Fugitive Anne (1904), Rose Praed, illustrated
Lentala of the South Seas (1908), W.C. Morrow
The Girl in the Golden Atom (1923), Ray Cummings
Maza of the Moon (1929), Otis Adelbert Kline
Bad Girls
Atlantida (1920), Pierre Benoit
Out of the Silence (1928), Erle Cox
Swordwomen
The Lost Continent (1900), C.J. Cutcliffe-Hyne
The Legend of Croquemitaine (1874), Ernest L'Epine, illustrated by Gustave Dore
Not Quite Human
The Beetle (1897). Richard Marsh, illustrated
Carmilla (1872), J. Sheridan LeFanu
The Lair of the White Worm (1911), Bram Stoker, illustrated
The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins (1751), Richard Paltock, illustrated
The Sea Lady (1902), H.G. Wells, illustrated
Angel Island (1914), Inez Haynes Gilmore
The Future Eve (1926), Villiers de L'Isle-Adam, illustrated
The Coming Race (1871), Edward Bulwer-Lytton
CHAPTER I
THE EARTH TREMBLES
I
THE world, our little planet Tellus, which is continually passing through the icy blackness of space with a motion surpassing the understanding even of the men, her inhabitants, who make a study of such things, had followed her orbit around the sun to a point where the rays of the hot orb beat strongly against her southern parts. Upon her axis she had revolved until the light lay upon the continent of South America, that triangular land which shapes off sharply toward the southern pole.
The summer season there was near its height; the shadowy clouds of vapor, bearing rain, swathed the layered air. Above the ocean on the eastern side moved the troubled winds, sweeping aside from time to time the veils of mist which hid the shifting surface of the deep, exposing to the brightness of the sun the leaping wa
ves, the sea-green troughs, the ever moving bosom of the ocean. In the sea there on the eastern side of the continent, seventy-five miles or so off the coast, a new island was growing, an island of such shape and size and of such a curious formation that the eye of an extraterrestrial observer, privileged to look down upon it through the flying clouds, would surely have been arrested by the sight.
It was curious, the process of the island’s growth. It was neither sudden, like a volcanic isle thrust noisily upward from the ocean’s bed, nor slow like the growth of a coral reef. Neither was it spasmodic; rather, the island grew in the sea in a series of waves or rhythms, mechanically. In its early state the whole perimeter had been enlarged at regular intervals until it measured nearly a mile across. Thereafter the growth became slower, but continued by another and even more peculiar method. An accretion appeared abruptly at one side. Presently another appeared beside it, and a third. In this fashion the growth went around and around, and the island broadened outward with each new ring of earth.
There were other peculiarities in connection with this strange new growth. At the center of the island there appeared a gleaming metallic structure which, viewed from above, might have been the top of a huge mushroom of steel, more than half a mile across . a structure of proportion and beauty and strength, containing neither rivet nor visible joint. There seemed to be some connection between this gigantic metal cap and the growth of the island. At every addition to the visible land a great puff of vapor, perhaps steam, shot out from beneath the hood in all directions, accompanied by an explosive swish. At the edge of the cap appeared a rotating metal prong or beak which moved about its outer edge like a finger, pointing always toward the region where the island’s growth was taking place as if directing or controlling the work.
If there were any men on the island, they were not in sight, and indeed it seemed unlikely that any animals of ordinary flesh and blood could be in a spot where such violent and mysterious forces were at work. Yet had there really been an observer hovering in the moist, warm air over the growing isle, he would surely have felt, after a time, that what was happening there was directed by an intelligence more methodical and exact than nature, and more certain of the ultimate plan.
II
In New York, still the giant city of the Western Hemisphere, winter was well under way. The southern sun, pouring its warmth for the time being on other parts, could scarcely penetrate with its feeble, slanting rays the haze of fog and smoke which overhung the islands and the bay. The boats that plied the rivers and the Sound moved in a cloud and gloom partly of their own making through winds that threatened snow and ice, while holiday throngs, responding to an ancient custom, crowded the paved streets between the canyon walls of high Manhattan, buying gifts for the coming season of ceremony and dedication.
The weather had fortunately been moderate. During the late summer and fall the inhabitants of the city had formed the habit of staying as much as possible out of doors. a habit they had continued on into the colder months, since perforce the condition which had brought it into being had not diminished, but rather had increased. It seemed that the world had suddenly been taken with a sort of terrestrial ague; it trembled in every part. Much apprehension was felt for New York’s tall buildings. monuments to industry and works of art on an island of never-moving rock, but traps and obelisks of death upon a land of tremors and eruptions. The tremblings were slight, but they were of an extremely unusual nature and of such continuance that the surprise and alarm of the seismologists had been transmitted to other scientists and finally to even the people in the streets. Upon the latter, and even upon those who should have been less easily moved by phenomena unseen and unheard and only vaguely imagined, the knowledge that the earth was shaking internally from pole to pole inspired an unreasoning terror, and every one, in cities and out, was vaguely afraid.
Business suffered as a result. The theaters were almost deserted; the larger stores saw patronage fall off. Markets which controlled the commodities of the world and the economic system which in the delicate balance weighed both toil and gold, playing one against the other, both suffered. Uneasiness spread among the traders; they had but a wavering faith now in the stability of anything. How could industry and the government be considered permanent when the very world, which had performed its revolutions undisturbed through countless centuries, had begun to break and crumble up, to shake and jerk?.
Sometimes men in the streets thought they felt through sensitive soles this regular vibration of the earth. In tall buildings the windows occasionally jibbered briefly in their frames. Scientists everywhere gave out warnings. Slowly, like the spread of ink through clear waters, the terror moved outward from the laboratories to the crowds and from the centers of population to the small towns and quiet country places, and everywhere men were afraid for the future of the earth.
To explain the phenomena there were many theories. Astronomers searched the heavens for planets, comets, or other bodies which might be exerting a malignant influence upon the earth. Physicists asserted that a new force, perhaps allied to electricity, was moving in the centrosphere; they sought in various ways to tap and measure it.1 Geologists drew elaborate charts to show how obscure changes in the deeper soils, brought about by chemical, physical, or other forces, would produce results of a vibrant kind upon the lithosphere.2
Unfortunately, none of these theories proved fruitful though many books were written about them, both technical and popular, which were widely and eagerly read. Summing up the ideas then current, in his weighty volume entitled The Trembling Earth, Andrew Storch, the physicist, concluded as had many another person in that day, that “whatever the cause of these vibrations, it is clear that nothing can be done by human agency to check or avert the doom which they may portend. All that any of us may hope is that the manifestations, which are not yet of a truly dangerous character, will become no worse. Fortunately,” he added, “it appears likely that the trouble may pass of its own accord in a few months.”
While the accepted scientists of the Western World were laboring in the universities and research laboratories to bring out these confessions of ignorance and confusion, two men of a different type were at work in a quiet, secluded house on New York’s upper East Side. two men whose findings were later to shock and startle the world.
The elder man was Dr. Emile Stannard Scott, a savant who was hardly obscure, however much his opinions were held in disrepute by his fellows. At twenty-two Dr. Scott had been accounted a genius, and a monograph he had written at that age on the construction of the earth’s interior had gained him a worldwide repute. But his later theories proved too radical, even for the more daring of the other scientists of his day. At sixty his books on the same subject, written after years of further study, were received more often with ridicule than with respect.
The other man was King Henderson, still young, and thought by many to be a rising star in the scientific world.
He was tall, determined, and quiet, a man for whom the knotty problems of science were completely fascinating, but one who remembered that ideas must be translated into action to be of value in a workaday world. As he worked with Dr. Scott, it was King who devised the proofs for the elder man’s theories, who arranged the demonstrations, and who carried on many of the more intricate investigations. It was King also who turned the findings of the scientist to useful ends.
In the house there was only one other person, Anna Scott, the daughter of the scientist. She was herself a mathematician of some ability. These three shared the secrets of the private laboratory, and no others knew what they were working at throughout the long autumn when the earth trembled and the ground moved with its strange uneasiness. From the time when the earth-vibrations first assumed importance, Dr. Scott and King had not ceased to speculate on them. It was not until months later, when other scientists had virtually given the matter up as one too obscure for solution, that King checked up the last of his calculations, and Dr. Scott brought to an e
nd the final test which proved his deductions to be correct.
One by one the facts had fallen into place. Like the building of an arch had the theories and the proofs grown and joined, falling inevitably into one pattern. They pointed to a conclusion that was inescapable.
“We’re through,” exclaimed King at length, when, amid the litter of the laboratory, the two men finally ceased their work. “And there’s what we were looking for. !”
As if to symbolize his meaning, he picked up from a table a small, double-pointed iron slug, a little larger than a bullet and somewhat similar to a bullet in shape. Dr. Scott nodded and sat down silently in a chair, looking at the scarred top of the laboratory table with an air of worry and puzzlement. The room was disordered and confused from the last hard hours of the work. Upon the wall a careful chart, tracing the history of the earth’s vibrations as they had grown from tiny, irregular tremblings to regular, powerful rhythmic movements, hung askew as if it had been much examined by men in haste. Chairs and tables were covered with crumpled sheets containing diagrams and endless calculations.
King sat down at the table opposite Dr. Scott, and the two men stared across it at each other for a moment, the elder trembling slightly at the strange import of the information which had come to his hand, the other pondering silently the dread events of the future, which had been forecast vaguely, but none the less surely, in the laboratory that morning.
“The proof is certainly there,” said Dr. Scott slowly. “Yet I hardly dare believe what our own efforts have brought to light!”
The Earth-Tube Page 1