Wonder of the Worlds

by Sesh Heri

  “I see,” Tesla said. “You believe I have been reckless in this conf lict with the Martians?” “I believe,” Lillie said, “that you have not only been reckless, but tyranni- cally unjust. Unjust to the people of the United States, unjust to the people of the world. The people of the world have a right to know of the existence of the Martians. A right, sir. And I intend to do everything in my power to see that their rights are upheld.” “I see,” Tesla said. “And so you broke into my warehouse to—do what?” “Photograph your airship and find whatever other evidence that I could to prove that the Martians exist.”

  “I see,” Tesla said. He went to the window and looked out at the globe of our world which was growing smaller and smaller. After a moment, Tesla turned around, and said, “You will never be allowed to print any photograph of this airship in your newspaper or in any newspaper or in any book anywhere in the world.” “And,” Lillie asked, “what about Freedom of the Press?”

  “An admirable institution,” Tesla said, “one I support wholeheartedly, along with another institution—survival—without which nothing else is possible. A public revelation of the Martian’s existence would shock mankind and shatter the premises of six thousand years of secular and religious history.” Lillie said, “It is time that the people of the world learned the truth about their world’s history.” “Perhaps,” Tesla said, “the thought of the existence of the Martians does not unsettle your mind, Miss West, but I judge you to have a mind that is somewhat above the average of our race. You are educated. You have given thought to both the high things as well as the low. I can see in your eyes that you have lived. You are a woman of unusual will and determination. I state the obvious, but for a reason: Do not assume because you are so that others are so. They are not. Much greater minds than yours have wrestled with this issue of

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  what the mass of men should know and what should be withheld from their knowledge. I will tell you what the greatest minds whom we have consulted believe would happen should the existence of the Martians be suddenly revealed to the mass of humanity: People would f lee the cities of the Earth. Industry would grind to a halt. The stock markets of the world would col- lapse. Governmental authority would crumble amid the chaos. The chain of military command would be broken. Political assassinations and coups would push aside the rule of law. Mass chaos and mob rule would follow—a chaos no army could contain or overturn. There would be rioting mass migrations, food shortages, and mass starvation, followed by the bloody genocide of millions and hundreds of millions. The Martians would have destroyed us without firing a shot.” “You really believe that would happen?” It was George Ade who had asked that question. “Yes,” Tesla said, “and so does President Cleveland.” “So Cleveland will order our editors to kill the story,” Ade said. “Yes,” Tesla said. “He will most certainly do that.” “And does this mean that we are your prisoners?” Lillie asked.

  “I do not consider you my prisoners,” Tesla said. “You are my guests. I ask only that you do not interfere with the operation of this ship.” “We have no intention of interfering with anything,” Ade said. “And,” Tesla said, “I ask that you keep the secret of our conflict with the Martians between us.”

  Lillie said, “You ask us not to interfere with the ship. You ask us to keep the secret of the Martians’ existence. You ask. Why? Why ask us anything? Why not be honest and put it all in the form of a direct order?” “Because,” Tesla said, “I seek your rational understanding and voluntary agreement, not your obedience. In this situation, your obedience is of very little value. In most situations, obedience is of very little value between ratio- nal, thinking people. I want to convey to you the understanding that our situ- ation is desperate. The Martians have stolen a crystal from me. The crystal is a device of great power, of tremendous energy.” “Is it a bomb?” Ade asked.

  “It could be used as a bomb,” Tesla said. “It has many uses, some wonder- ful, and some so terrible as to be beyond your imaginations.” “I see,” Ade said. “I understand the secrecy.”

  “I don’t,” Lillie said. “Nothing Mr. Tesla has said justifies keeping the exist- ence of the Martians a secret from the public. Quite the contrary. It argues for their exposure.” “And how is that?” Tesla asked.

  “What happens if the Martians attack our cities and the public has not been told? What would be the effect then? It is then you would have the mass panic

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  which you so fear. Do you think so little of your fellow man that you feel you must shelter him from the truth like a child?” “I think a great deal of my fellow man, Miss,” Tesla said. “Then why don’t you give your fellow man a chance?” “There are some things that, for the sake of my fellow man, must be kept secret. The theft of my crystal proves that.”

  “I’m not talking about your crystal—or any military secret. I’m talking about the fact of the Martians’ existence, a fundamental scientific, political, historical fact. The kind of fact that the authorities have always attempted to suppress from the days of Socrates to Galileo to now. Why don’t you live up to the ideals which you proclaim?” “What do you mean?”

  Lillie stood up and looked back to the blue circle of the world. When she spoke, she was reciting from memory: “’I came to America because it was here where I could most fully develop my ideas. It is here in America where every man has a chance to know the truth about all things. And this is the noblest ideal; for every man has the right to know and live the truth.’ Nikola Tesla, New York Times, 1892. Why, Mr. Tesla? Why don’t you live up to the ideals which you proclaim? Or are you just another Edison? Another P. T. Barnum of electricity? A shoddy lightning rod that bends at the slightest breeze?” Lillie stood looking up into Tesla’s eyes, and Tesla stood looking down into Lillie’s. Tesla did not answer her, but stood slumped, his hands hanging at his sides. Then Lillie turned abruptly, and started out of the room. “Lillie!” Ade cried, rising to his feet. But Lillie had gone through the door. “I’m sorry, Mr. Tesla,” Ade said. “Miss West can be headstrong at times, and—”

  “Please,” Tesla said. “Do not apologize for her.”

  Tesla continued to stand there for a moment. Then he turned and went through the door. Ade looked over at Houdini, and Houdini shrugged, got up, and went out the door as well.

  George Ade was left alone. He turned and looked out through the mul- lioned window at Earth which was becoming a small blue disk in the cold, black night of space.

  Up in the pilothouse I stood before the wheel, watching the incandescent light on the little tin box and making slight adjustments to it and the wheel every few moments. We were pursuing the foreign airship on an almost straight trajectory across the solar system to the planet Mars, and had al- ready traveled nearly 500,000 miles into space, for I kept my foot on the

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  accelerator pedal and so our speed was constantly and steadily accelerating. Tesla warned me not to accelerate too much at one time; he was uncertain how much heat the engine’s wiring could actually take. This was one detail he had not yet thought out completely. There we were, hurtling along at about half a million miles an hour, yet, standing at the pilot’s wheel, it felt as if we were not moving at all. Our solar system was so immense that you could travel and travel at the most unimagin- able speeds and still not have traversed a fraction of it.

  I stood there, gazing at what seemed to be unmoving stars, and ref lected upon who I was, where I was, and what I was. I was only a man. And man, the species, is only an incident in a scheme. He is not sure where he came from, and he is not sure where he is going. He is like the oyster. The oyster believes that the world was made for him, that all those millions of years of evolution were just so he could get his rights. Then along comes the maitre de, and the oyster is served.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  A Good Imitation of Hell

  What’s a desert good for? ‘Taint good for nuthin’. Dey ain’t no way to make it pay.

  — Jim, Tom Sawyer
Abroad

  The distance between Earth and Mars at their closest approach is about 35 million miles, give or take a few million. If we use Man as the measure, following the example of the ancient Greeks, I estimate that it would only take about 10,000 years to walk that distance between the two planets, if you kept up a steady pace and only observed the Sabbath and all the regular holidays. Anyone can see that it is not that far. Of course, no one person would ever live long enough to go the whole distance. It would have to be done in relays; about 142 life-long relays would reach to the finish line. One man would start out, go on walking for about 70 years more or less, and then let his great-grandson take a turn. That next generation would march for another life-span, or thereabouts, retire from the field, and hand the business over to its descendants, just as it is done here on Earth, only these people would be walking through the vacuum of interplan- etary space, and that ought to be easy enough, seeing that there is nothing to get in the way, except maybe an asteroid or two. Upon reflection however, maybe there would be a few difficulties. Tesla informs me that interplanetary space is just chock-full of what he calls “cosmic rays,” “fields of force,” and “domains of intensified ether.” These things do not sound very inviting. You would not want to stroll through that kind of weather without thoroughly bundling up. If you did not suffocate for lack of air—and you would—you would most assuredly get fried from the inside out as all that “intensified ether” and all those “cosmic rays” passed through your internal

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  regions. It is strange that all that empty space could be so filled up and crowded, but that is the way it is out there in the eternal night between the planets, and one must either take it or leave it; one can no more change the nature of outer space than one can reform a congressman: one will clambake you from the inside out, the other will coddle you from the outside in; either way, your goose is cooked.

  We in our airship did not have to be concerned about any of those things. Our airship protected us just fine. Surrounding the hull of our airship was a very strong magnetic field which kept out all that weather that was blowing around out there in all that empty, filled-up space. Tesla says that the magnetic field surrounding our ship functioned just like the magnetic field surrounding the Earth: it was a shield that absorbed or reflected etheric and cosmic rays. Yes, we were snug in our airship, and we did not have to proceed at a walking pace, either. No, we did not have to depend on any relays. We would all go to Mars together, and go without any lolly-gagging or dawdling. The six of us aboard Tesla’s airship were not a crew; we were only a collec- tion of individuals, and, with the exceptions of Tesla and Czito, we knew nothing about airships or the interplanetary ether or even general science, for that matter. I knew my multiplication tables up to twelve times twelve; Houdini knew a little something about locks and a little bit more about sleight-of-hand; Lillie West had an impressive knowledge of musical theory and could speak French like a French- man; George Ade had a Purdue University education in literature and a Chicago newspaperman’s education in civic mendacity, petty crime, union riots, profes- sional pugilism, baseball, and Chicago weather. None of these skills and talents was of much use on board an airship that was gradually accelerating through interplanetary space to a speed of ten million miles an hour. Yes, I had been a steamboatman on the Mississippi River. But that was before the Civil War, and the Mississippi is not anything like interplanetary space. For one thing, there is much more water on the Mississippi, and the scenery has more variety. I did understand the art of steering a vessel, and that counted for something, that is, if anything counts. But piloting an airship was really nothing like piloting a steamboat. With a steamboat you worry all the time. With an airship you hardly ever worry any of the time, but when you do worry, it’s nothing like steamboat worrying; it’s a kind of worrying that comes to you like a clap of thunder and grabs you and shakes you and won’t let you go; it’s a kind of worrying that has no direction, no up or down, no forward or backward, it’s just there, and yet you still don’t know where it is. At least I had something to do. Lillie West, George Ade, and Houdini found themselves at loose ends.

  Lillie West sat in a little room situated behind the ship’s engines on the starboard side of the upper deck. She sat looking out of a porthole at the unmoving stars. Several times Tesla stuck his head into the room to look in on

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  her. When he did this, Lillie refused to acknowledge him; she said not a word, nor even turned her head.

  George Ade remained in Tesla’s library at the stern of the ship, mesmer- ized by the sight of our planet shrinking away from us. He kept watching it as it shrank to a small blue disk, and then to a brilliant blue star. Finally Ade sat down in an armchair, gazing off into a field of stars where Earth had once been visible. The stars had not changed at all, but Earth was gone, or perhaps that was Earth, that little faint blue star that shone there among all the others. Ade tried to comprehend what was happening, but he couldn’t really do it. It all seemed like a magic lantern show. He sat there trying to make it real; then he thought of the Great Chicago Fire when he was a boy, and how he watched its glow in the sky from a distance of eighty miles. The Chicago Fire did not seem real to him then, either. But it was real—and so was this. Houdini was not in a reflective mood as he moved through the airship; it was not his nature to be so in times of crisis. He saved his reflections for long walks at night through cities and along rivers and lakes. He always walked alone when he reflected. He would speak to no one, and would tell no one where he was going. Houdini was a creature of secrets, but these were not the secrets of locks and chains; they were secrets of the human heart and will. Unlike the rest of us, Houdini had made it a daily practice to place himself in crisis—a self-made crisis. Then he would watch himself as if at a distance. He would see a man struggling under water, fighting not just for breath, but for courage to endure the immedi- ate moment. That man was not “Houdini,” he was “Ehrich Weiss”—Houdini’s real name and real person. Houdini was the person watching from a distance. But now, Houdini was not in crisis. No, his heart was light, and he was congratu- lating himself. He had made it “inside the container,” and even now he was working on how to get out. He had gone to the lower deck of the airship and was looking over everything that was there: the air pressure suits hanging on the ship’s bulkhead, the escape craft gleaming with its clear dome of glass. His eyes twinkled in delight, and he could not help but reach out to… “Don’t touch that!” Czito barked.

  Houdini jumped back and thrust his hands behind his back. Czito had descended the ladder and had caught Houdini trying to lift the dome of glass up off the craft. “I was only lookin’ at it,” Houdini said.

  “Don’t touch anything down here,” Czito said. “Don’t touch anything any- where on this ship unless you are given permission by Mr. Tesla or me.” “Aw,” Houdini said, “I ain’t doin’ nothin’.” “Watch yourself!” Czito said, and went back up the ladder.

  “Aw,” Houdini said, scratching the back of his head. He went over to a door with a porthole and peered through the little round window. Czito came back down the ladder.

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  “What did I tell you?” Czito barked. “Aw, can it!” Houdini said. “I told you I was just lookin’.” “Don’t tell me to can it!” Czito shouted.

  Czito came down the ladder and went up to Houdini and stood face to face with him. “When I give an order,” Czito said, “you obey it, or you’ll get locked up!” “So?” Houdini said. “You think I care? What is this anyway?” “It’s an airlock,” Czito said.

  “You mean, like a water lock on a submarine?” Houdini asked.

  “That’s right,” Czito said. “When the door closes it forms a hermetic seal. Then the chamber has all the air pumped out of it and is compressed into storage tanks.” “What for?”

  “Never mind what for,” Czito said. “Just keep your hand off that handle. Fool with that and you’ll suck all our air out of the ship.” “N
o kiddin’! Say, that’s dangerous. You should put a lock on that to keep it from being fooled with.” “Up until now we didn’t need to because on this ship we haven’t had any fools. You come with me.” Czito took Houdini by the back of his coat collar and pulled him over to the steel ladder.

  “Hey!” Houdini shouted, “Hands off the fabric! You’re stretchin’ the threads!” “Get up there,” Czito said, shoving him up the steel ladder. “I’m going to keep my eye on you.”

  Houdini went up the ladder with Czito following up behind him. When they got to the upper deck, Czito pointed to a metal box and said, “Sit!” “There?” Houdini asked indignantly. “There,” Czito said. “And don’t move until you’re given permission.” Houdini sat down. Czito started up the steps to the pilothouse. Houdini said, “I wasn’t doin’ nothin’. Nothin’!”

  We had been moving along on a straight course for quite some time when Tesla came into the pilothouse, approached Czito, and said, “Go rest. I’ll take over.” Czito got up from his chair and went down the steps and out of the pilothouse.

  I said, “They’ve been going at a steady clip for some time.”

  Tesla said, “I suspect that they have achieved an optimum acceleration for the particular energy system which drives their ship. Interestingly, if this is their optimum acceleration, it falls within the specifications for the optimum accel- eration of our ship.” “Do you think that’s a mere coincidence?”

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  “What do you think?”

  “I think their ship is too much like your ship.” “Very good, Mark.” “How do you think they stole your designs?”

  “We have suspected that the Martians have been visiting our planet for a number of years, perhaps several decades. We think they first came to Earth by a large rocket propelled by some kind of chemical fuel. This is suggested by the size of the ship we have observed orbiting Earth. It is a tenth of a mile in length. Most of the mass of that ship probably consists of a fuel supply.” “So what are you saying? That they sent spies to your laboratory?”