Wonder of the Worlds

by Sesh Heri

  I was nearly knocked off my feet. I tightened my grip on the pilot’s wheel. “Hold her steady, Mark!” Tesla shouted from the gun tower. “I’m trying!” I shouted back.

  Just as I got our airship steadied, Tesla fired a ray of electricity from the gun tower. [Fzt! - boom - beroom!]

  I saw a bright, white beam of undulating light shining from above the top edge of the pilothouse windows. The beam of light struck the side of the foreign airship, making a circle of blinding light on its dull, black hull. From that circle of light radiated countless fingers of crawling electric bolts girdling the foreign airship round about. The foreign airship shuddered in the sky, then shot straight up, breaking free of Tesla’s beam. “Go after them, Mark!”

  I pulled back on the pilot’s wheel, and our airship turned her prow to the zenith. I could see the foreign airship moving away straight up through the sky. It looked like it was falling in the wrong direction. I followed the black speck of the foreign airship straight up.

  After a moment, I noticed something most peculiar. The sky was changing color; it had been a bright blue, but now it was a deep, dark blue, and growing darker by the second. Then I saw a star—then another one.

  “My God!” I shouted. “The sun’s going out!”

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  “It’s not the sun,” Tesla shouted down from the gun tower. “We’re leaving the atmosphere of Earth and entering the interplanetary vacuum!” The sky became a deep, dark blue, just as it appears after sunset when the stars come out. And then the dark blue flashed away. The sky was suddenly a solid black, a cold, solid black studded with stars more brilliant than I had ever gazed upon in my life, even those I had viewed from the peaks of high moun- tains. Every star was a pure, clear, bright point of white, and there were mil- lions upon millions of these white points out there, and, through it all, the Milky Way stretched overhead and earned its name; it was a river of milky liquid frozen in its flow through the infinite, dead blackness of airless space. All sense of earth-bound existence ceased; I felt we were lost amid a vast, endless sea of stars and black space. Tesla shouted, “The foreign airship is starboard thirty degrees!”

  I managed to turn the pilot’s wheel starboard. The airship responded; the starry night sky shifted larboard. Then what came into my view from beyond the windows of the pilothouse made me gasp for air and blink my eyes. I saw the black cylinder of the foreign airship silhouetted against the glowing blue and white globe of the world! We had actually traveled out into the great dark of interplanetary space and were looking back at the world! I did not have time to study this uncanny view. The foreign airship was hurtling toward us. Tesla fired—[Fzt!] —and the white ray coming from our airship struck the foreign airship on its bow and def lected its course away from us. The foreign airship fired back. [Fzt! - boom!]

  A wall of white light filled the windows, and I was thrown back across the pilothouse. I dove back to the wheel, grabbed it with both my hands, and steered our airship in a tight circle around the foreign airship. Tesla started firing a barrage of electric rays, and these struck the foreign air- ship at various places on its hull. With each strike the foreign airship seemed to shudder and be pushed back. It seemed as if Tesla was nudging the foreign airship in a series of pushes that was sending it back down to the earth. Tesla was not engaged in a militar y attack, but a cold act of mechanical engineering aimed at bringing the foreign airship down to the ground and all in one piece. Suddenly, a bright ball of red fire shot from the foreign airship and struck us somewhere below the pilothouse. [Fzt! - boom - beroom - boom! Bumble - smash!]

  There was a brilliant flash of light and a vibration so powerful that it shook me to my bones. I was knocked off my feet and thrown across the pilothouse. I was an instant from falling on my back, to be killed, or at least crippled for life. But I did not hit the f loor, nor did I hit anything.

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  For a moment I felt like I was falling. I thought a hole had opened up in the f loor and I was falling back to the earth to my doom. But after a moment, I managed to turn my head. I was not falling, at least not falling through any f loor, for the floor was below me and was not going anywhere; neither was I. It was then that I realized that I was actually f loating above the f loor and at that moment I truly believed that I was dead. I looked out the pilothouse windows and saw that the blue and white globe of the world was orbiting around us once every three seconds! Then I saw Czito coming toward me. It looked like he was swimming underwater. But he was not swimming in water—he was swimming in air! Somehow I managed to get my jaw to move and my lungs to breathe, and I shouted, “Hey! Hey! What’s happening? Are we dead?” “Not dead,” Czito said. “Weightless.” Tesla came out of the gun tower and swam through the air toward us. “Czito!” Tesla said. “Check for a short circuit in the coils.”

  Czito swam away. It seemed to me that Czito had some expertise in swim- ming in air, and it occurred to me that he and Tesla had been up this way before. Czito swam out of the pilothouse and down into the upper deck. In a moment he shouted: “Mr. Tesla! There are people back here!”

  Tesla swam down near the steps leading out of the pilothouse and looked down the length of the upper deck. I tried a couple of breaststrokes and found that I could swim in the air, too. If I wasn’t dead, I surely was flying like an angel. I came up behind Tesla and peered down into the upper deck. Down there—or up there—or wherever there—for all up and down had become mean- ingless—out there was Czito f loating like Montpelier’s balloon. Next to him were two other human balloons: Lillie West, holding her skirt with some awk- wardness, and George Ade, reaching into the air trying to grab his hat which was f loating in front of him. “Stowaways,” Tesla said. “Damn it to hell,” I said. “The coils!” Tesla shouted to Czito.

  Czito slid open the door of the ship’s engine and reached inside to the machinery. I felt something click inside my head, and a pop in my ears, and thousands of invisible fingers pull me down in the direction of the airship’s f loor. My innards lagged behind the way that innards always do when you take a sudden plunge.

  All of us hit the f loor at the same instant. I landed on my right knee, and felt a sharp, sudden pain shoot up my leg from my knee to my hip. “Ow!” I shouted. “Oh! Damn it all to hell and back! What in the hell kind of tumble jug is this?”

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  “Sorry, Mark,” Tesla said, getting up off the f loor. “I thought this ship had its own gravity!” “We had a slight disruption.”

  “Disruption? Eruption, you mean! I landed on my good leg. My good leg! Now I’m a cripple with two bad legs!” I lay there in agony, rolling about. Tesla helped me to my feet. I rubbed my leg. It didn’t seem to be broken, but it hurt like plumb perfect hell. I turned about and saw Lillie West and George Ade coming up the steps of the pilot- house with Czito behind them. “And what the hell are the two of you doing here?” I shouted.

  Ade started to open his mouth, but I held up my hand, and said: “Wait. Don’t answer that. Don’t answer that. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing here.” “Friends of yours?” Tesla asked me.

  “Not by a damn sight,” I said. “They’re a couple of snooping Newspaper reporters.” “George Ade, Chicago Record.”

  “When I said you were persistent I was expressing only a pale representa- tion of the truth! You two have no idea what you’ve gotten yourselves into!” “Some idea,” Ade said. “We’re in a war.”

  “Damn right we’re in a war,” I said. “And you’ve brought your lady friend here to the front lines.” “I am not his lady friend,” Lillie said, “nor has he brought me anywhere. I’m here entirely of my own accord.”

  “Well,” I said, “your own accord is trespassing on private property—no— Federal Government property! This here ship has been commandeered by the President of the United States! And we’re all under sealed military orders! When we get back home—if we get back home—both of you will be locked up in solitary confinement in the Federal Penitentiary for a hundred years!�
� There was a sound of crashing coming from the upper deck. Czito went down the steps of the pilothouse and stopped before the open door of the engines. “It’s another one, Mr. Tesla,” Czito said. Tesla went down the steps and stopped in front of the engines. “Ehrich!” Tesla said, “What are you doing in there?”

  I came down the steps, stopped next to Tesla and Czito and looked into the engine. I saw Houdini hanging upside down inside the engine, his arms and legs all tangled up in the machinery. “Friend of yours?” I asked Tesla.

  Tesla said, “Ehrich used to be my messenger in New York.” “I was blackmailed,” Houdini said. “They blackmailed me, Mr. Tesla. I didn’t want to do it.”

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  “Come out of there,” Tesla said, “before you electrocute yourself.” “Yes, sir, Mr. Tesla, yes, sir,” Houdini said, climbing out of the engine. “Watch that wire!” Tesla shouted. Houdini came on out, stood up, and looked up at Tesla. “Come with me,” Tesla said, and we all went back up to the pilothouse.

  I looked out the windows. There was no sign of the foreign airship any- where. If it was out there, it was not visible against the blackness of the starry night. And it was a very strange starry night; for all around us was a starry black sky, while our pilothouse was f looded with sunlight. Tesla went to the little tin box mounted on the pedestal near the pilot’s wheel. The box’s bulb was dark. Tesla pivoted the box around on its pedestal. “Czito,” Tesla said, “do you see anything in the viewing glass?”

  Czito went to the control board at the aft of the pilothouse and bent over a square of glass set into the board. The glass glowed with incandescent electri- cal light, showing up as a number of flashing points on its surface to form some kind of diagram or map. I came closer and looked at it, and recognized that it was a diagram of our solar system. Czito said, “The foreign airship is moving off rapidly—in the direction of… Mars!”

  Tesla came up next to Czito and looked at the diagram made of incandes- cent light. He studied the diagram a moment and then turned to me, pointed at the tin box mounted on the pedestal next to the pilot’s wheel, and said, “There’s your compass, Mark.” I said, “You don’t really intend for us to chase those varmints any further, do you?” “As you said, Mark, we are under sealed orders to retrieve the crystal—or destroy it.”

  I turned away from Tesla and went to the window. The blue and white globe of the world was no longer circling our airship, or, that is to say, we were no longer spinning around in space. I said, “I didn’t sign up for service to leave the planet.”

  “Mark!” Tesla cried, and he came up next to me, and led me away from the others as far as he could. Then he said in a low tone: “I do not know the extent of the Martians’ knowledge. They seem to have applied electrical principles similar to those which I have discovered. Perhaps they know more than I do, perhaps less. But one thing is certain: They have the Master Crystal in their possession, and within a short time they will under- stand and use its power. And its power is majestic. It is capable of splitting the Earth in two and hurtling it into the sun. Now. Do you want to go home?” I looked into Tesla’s face and saw a great fear and dread in his expression, especially in his eyes. His face was definitely swollen now, but he was no longer sweating.

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  Uncertainty tore at my insides. If I took us back to the ground, I might be sentencing everyone in the world—including my wife and children—to a dark and uncertain future—a future of devastating war with an otherworldly people who, perhaps, held human life of no value and no consequence whatsoever. If I went forward, I was risking my life and the lives of everyone on board, and there was no guarantee—indeed, little hope—that through that risk we might rescue our world from the grasp of those otherworldly hands. I weighed our little hope against our dark uncertainty, then turned, grasped the pilot’s wheel, turned the airship about so that her prow was aligned with the steel rod of the tin box—and pressed the accelerator pedal with my foot. “Thank you, Mark,” Tesla said.

  “Don’t thank me. I’m taking us to a funeral—our own.”

  I looked over at the tracking machine mounted on its pedestal; its light bulb was dark. Then there was a feeble f lash, then darkness again. I pressed the accelerator pedal with my foot. I had no sense of forward motion; the stars before me didn’t move. I pressed the accelerator down harder. “Nothing’s happening,” I said. “We’re not moving.”

  “On the contrary,” Tesla said, “You have us moving along at a speed of ten thousand miles an hour.” Tesla pointed to a speed indicator on the panel in front of the pilot’s wheel. The indicator’s little numbered wheels lined up to form the figure of “10,000.” Tesla said, “Pay no attention to the fixed stars. You will not see them move, not on this f light.”

  Tesla took Lillie, Ade, and Houdini all the way aft along the upper deck to the stern of the airship. Here was a room encased above and around by mul- lioned windows like those of the pilothouse. It was a bright little parlor, lit by the blazing sun shining through a starry night sky. This strange combination of night and day which is the eternal shade of interplanetary space was a sight to which none of us would become accustomed. Three sides of the parlor were walled in with mullioned windows from waist high up, and the windows curved upward to form something of a dome overhead. The fourth wall of the parlor was fitted with bookcases and a writing desk. The books were locked into the shelves with a covering of wire mesh doors. The parlor was furnished with armchairs, a center table, and a settee. The chairs and settee had been overturned, but the table had somehow landed upright on its feet. Tesla went about the room turning the chairs and settee upright. When he had finished, he went and stood before the mullioned win- dows at the stern of the airship. Behind him hung the brilliant blue and white globe of the world, slowly shrinking in size against an unchanging, star-scat- tered blackness.

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  “Come in,” Tesla said to the others who had stood in the doorway watching him. “Come in and sit down. All of you.” Lillie came in, followed by Houdini, and then Ade. Lillie sat in a chair and Houdini slumped down on the settee. George Ade remained standing. “Mr. Ade, is it?” Tesla asked. “Please be seated.” Ade came over and sat in the chair across the table from Lillie. Tesla looked at Lillie, and asked, “How did you gain entry to the airship?” Lillie started to speak, but then nodded her head toward Houdini who, in turn, held his palms to his chest in an expression of total innocence. “Ehrich? How did you get in here?” Tesla asked. Houdini said, “Through the window.”

  Tesla inclined his head. “Through the window? You mean, the skylight on the roof?” “That’s right,” Houdini said.

  “I see,” Tesla said. “And why exactly did all of you do this? Why did you break in?” Houdini shrugged, “Like I said, Mr. Tesla, I was blackmailed—by them two people sitting there. They made me do it. They said if I didn’t help them, they’d reveal my trade secrets—or phony something up and say those were my secrets. I made a mistake, Mr. Tesla, a mistake, that’s all. A mistake in trusting.”

  “It seems you are not the only person who has made a mistake in trusting,” Tesla said. “I never thought you would do this to me, Ehrich, even under the threat of blackmail.” “You don’t understand, Mr. Tesla. They were going to do a number on me in the papers, a big write-up about the secrets of Houdini being revealed. If they had done that, they would’ve ruined me, ruined me before I even got my foot all the way in to the show business! Then what would I have? Nothing! A whole lot of nothing and me with a widowed mother and sister to support! And they meant it! I know they meant to do me one and good. And then they were talkin’ a lot of high-falutin’ lingo about democracy and freedom of the press and the rights of the people and how I was a gutless coward and liar! That was what they was talkin’, Mr. Tesla! Sounding so high and mighty and full of airs! And mockin’ the name of Houdini, Mr. Tesla, mockin’ the name of Houdini! I wasn’t going to let them get away with that! I had to show ‘em, Mr. Tesla, I had to show ‘em! And I did s
how ‘em. I did. And now here we are, and there it is, and that is that. I made a mistake, a mistake in trusting. But, Mr. Tesla, I never meant you no harm. Never. You was always square with me, and I’m sorry for this mess I made, but I can’t unmake it. I can’t unmake it.” Houdini sat, slowly shaking his head back and forth.

  “No, Ehrich,” Tesla said, “you certainly cannot unmake it.” Tesla turned back to Lillie West and George Ade. “And what about you two people? What do you have to say for yourselves?”

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  “It is not for us to justify our actions,” Lillie said, “but for you to justify yours.” “Ya see what I mean, Mr. Tesla?” Houdini asked. “Have you ever heard such airs?” “Your statement is most interesting, Miss,” Tesla said. “You break into my private property. You put lives at risk, yours as well as countless others. And then you say it is for me to justify my actions. By what logic do you support your position?”

  “Your question is most interesting, sir,” Lillie said. “You carry on a secret war with weapons of incredible power. You put lives at risk, yours as well as countless others. And then you refuse to acknowledge your responsibility. By what logic do you support your position?” Tesla blinked.