by Sesh Heri
“Of course. I have always assumed that anyone in my employ is a potential industrial spy.” “Does that include Mr. Czito?”
“Mr. Czito is an exception to my rule. Him, I trust implicitly.”
“And so you think you have actually employed Martians in your labora- tory?” “That is highly unlikely. I believe the Martians are a very sophisticated and subtle people. They know how to work through intermediaries. These inter- mediaries probably have no idea that they are working for people from an- other world. There is some indication that the Martians are involved with some large-scale counterfeiting operations. We think that most of their activity on Earth has been financed with counterfeit bank-notes. The United States Treasury Department has been trying to trace the source of these operations. Of course, the Treasury agents have not been told that the people they are pursuing are probably beings from another world.” “If the Martians sent paid spies from among our own people to steal your designs, why did they send one of their own to steal the crystal?”
“I have been extremely circumspect with the crystal. No one besides Czito even knew that it existed. I kept the crystal in an electrically shielded lead- lined vault. There was no way that any of my employees could know anything about the crystal at all.” “Then how do you think the Martians knew what you had and how to get at it?”
“I have been running that very question over in my mind since the crystal was stolen. I know this: my sources for the metals which went into the making of the crystal were secret, but now I realize their secrecy was not unassailable. Let’s assume the Martians had some fragmentary, imperfect knowledge of the crystal. If this were so, they would be able to make some inference as regards the nature of my activities by the kind of metals I was working with, most particularly those metals of the platinum group.” “But how could they have a fragmented knowledge of what the crystal was made of?”
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“Because the crystal existed long ago on both our world and theirs, but the making of it was lost on Earth long ago, as it was probably lost on Mars. On Earth, the process has been sought by alchemists for thousands of years.” “Is the Master Crystal the Philosopher’s Stone?”
“The Philosopher’s Stone is used in the Master Crystal; it is the ‘new ele- ment’ which I’ve discovered; actually it is gold in a highly energized state. The making of the Philosopher’s Stone was never lost, only held as a secret among a very few. On the other hand, the Master Crystal was entirely lost.” “So the Martians could not directly spy out your crystal making operation, so they were forced to steal the Master Crystal itself.” “Yes. And I fear that they know enough that once they study the Master Crystal, they will very quickly unravel the secrets of its making.”
That thought gave me pause, and I fell into a silence. After a minute or two of thinking upon the whole situation, it occurred to me that we should lose no time in catching up with the Martians. So I asked: “You say we are going at about the optimum acceleration the engine can sustain?” “We are close to its limit. You must understand that this ship is only a prototype, and is really quite crude. With the proper engineering, a ship could be made that could travel from Earth to Mars in a blink of an eye.” “So you don’t think we should try to catch up with them—or you don’t think we can?” “We could most certainly put on a short burst of speed and catch up to them. We can safely do that. Indeed, we must do that before they reach Mars, and I do believe that is their destination. But for now we must wait.” “Why? Why not do it now and be done with it?”
“The destruction of the Martian ship is going to be extremely problemati- cal. It must be a precise operation if we ourselves are to escape alive.” “By all means. Escaping alive is at the top of my list.”
“But these Martians are formidable adversaries. The electric rays I fired upon them had little effect. It seems that their ship has an electro-magnetic field surrounding it, just as our does, and that field acts as a shield, tending to def lect anything that comes within its path. “So how will you destroy their ship?”
“I have been working on one of our sets of auxiliary capacitors. They were partially damaged in our battle with the Martian ship. I am now in the process of re-charging them. I’m charging them slowly and carefully by a special process to avoid a sudden dielectric break-down. When the capacitors are fully charged, we shall close in on the Martian airship and hurl at it a single, intense ball of electric- ity. That ball will blast their ship into a cloud of super-heated gas.” “That sounds like a workable and practical plan, and one I endorse enthusiastically. ”
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“There is only one problem. When we destroy the Martians, we risk destroy- ing ourselves as well; for when the Master Crystal is broken, it will release enough energy to destroy a planet. The moment I fire upon the Martians, you must reverse direction and accelerate to the speed of light within one or two seconds. To do that, you must engage this special switch here and slam the accelerator pedal to the floor. Do you think we can carry out such an operation?” “We can. We can and for one reason only: we must.” Tesla nodded grimly, and then turned back toward the control board. Suddenly Tesla shouted, “Czito! Come here!”
Czito came running up the steps of the pilothouse, and rushed to Tesla’s side. I went to where they stood and peered over Czito’s shoulder. The dia- gram of the solar system showed several new f lashing points of light where there had previously been only the one indicating the Martian airship. Tesla was able to magnify the view of these points of light until they filled the whole viewing glass. “What do you think they are?” Tesla asked. “Ships maybe?” Czito asked.
“No,” Tesla said, “not ships. Look at the arrangement of their positions: too irregular, too random. Ships would be spread out in a symmetrical formation more or less. This is a collection of objects moving at random through space.” “Maybe the Martian ship exploded,” Czito said.
“Think, Mr. Czito!” Tesla said. “If their ship had exploded, we would have witnessed an intense f lash of light from the disintegrating Master Crystal. No. This is something else. Asteroids. They are asteroids.” “Of course!” Czito said. “But where did they come from all of a sudden?” Tesla said, “It may have originally been a single asteroid just out of reach of our electric echo-beam. The Martians could have broken it into pieces by firing an electric ray at it.” “Why would they do that?” Czito asked.
“To accomplish precisely what they have accomplished,” Tesla said. “Con- fuse us in our pursuit. Which one of those lights represents the Martian’s ship?” “I don’t know,” Czito said.
“And there is no way to know,” Tesla said. “The Master Crystal is so far away from us, the wireless tracker cannot accurately locate it. How big do you think those asteroid fragments are?” “Hard to say,” Czito replied. “They must be at least as large as the Martian airship.” “At least,” Tesla said. “Mark, do you think you can steer your way through them?”
I said, “I suppose we are going to find out very shortly.”
I turned forward and saw a white streak of light shoot over the top of the pilothouse.
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“Looks like we’re going to find out in about two seconds,” I added. I went to the wheel and took hold of it. “Back us up,” Tesla said. “Back us up.”
I hit the pedal to stop the ship, looked at the number counter that told our speed, and saw that we had stopped dead still in space. I then pressed the reverse pedal. The counter started forward again, only a negative sign rolled into place in front of the other numbers. In a moment, I saw the first of several asteroids tumbling toward us; it looked like a locomotive gone off its tracks. “Try to match our speed to the asteroids,” Tesla said.
I pressed the reverse pedal a little more. The asteroids rolling toward us seemed to slow down a bit. Tesla and Czito stood by me; all our eyes were glued to the objects speeding toward us. I watched one big rock spin by the starboard bow of the ship and on aft of us so close that I felt that I could’ve r
eached out and touched it. As I looked behind for that instant I caught sight of Houdini, Lillie West and George Ade coming up the stairs and into the pilothouse. I turned for- ward again with a jerk; more fragments of rock were headed straight at us. I swung the prow of the ship larboard and the fragments flew past our starboard side. I glanced back again and saw that our three stowaways still clung to the railing of the stairs leading up into the pilothouse. “What are all of you doing up here?” I said, turning forward again. “You three go aft and start practicing your solitaire.” Tesla said, “We must consider them a part of the crew. We may have need of their help.” “Help!” I said, “The only thing they can do is help get us all killed!”
I kept increasing the speed of our reverse motion. Two spinning chunks of rock that looked like gray lava sped directly toward us. I steered our ship around them, only to find behind them a potato-shaped rock the size of a mountain. It grew in size with terrifying rapidity, and I steered our airship up to avoid it, only to realize that we were doing nothing but climbing up the asteroid’s face. Here was the main body: a cruel and pitted gray surface that grew to such monstrous proportions that it nearly filled the view of the pilot- house windows. I pulled the wheel back and turned the bow of our ship straight up and hit the forward accelerator pedal. The asteroid continued to- ward us, threatening to crush us like a f ly. We seemed only a second away from being smashed against its surface when we cleared its last, craggy peak, and the whole mountainous rock passed beneath us in a wink and a f lash. As we came up over the asteroid, I brought our airship back to its original orientation in relation to the fixed stars. It was then that we saw the great tail of the asteroid spread out before us: hundreds—perhaps thousands—of asteroid rocks and fragments along with tons upon tons of pulverized rock dust hurtling
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toward us from the blackness of starry space. There was no time to avoid this sea of fragments, only time to plunge through it and steer from one near disaster to another. I brought the ship down, up, starboard, larboard. Every turn of the wheel saved our lives from one threat while at the same time placing us at risk of dying from another. I asked Tesla, “You said this ship has a magnetic shield, didn’t you?” “Yes,” Tesla said. “It will def lect or vaporize the smaller particles.” “What about the larger particles?” I asked. “I would advise you to avoid the larger particles,” Tesla replied. “I was afraid of that,” I said. Lillie came up beside Tesla and asked him, “What happens if one of those large fragments hit the ship?”
Tesla said quietly, “The ship will split apart. And if the impact doesn’t kill us, we will all suffocate in the vacuum.” “Oh,” I said, “don’t sugar-coat it for her, Tesla. Just give her the raw facts.” Up ahead I spied an opening in the field of debris, a great black ‘O’ with only stars beyond it. I aimed the bow of our ship for the center of the ‘O.’ “This is almost as bad as the bend around Hat Island on the Mississippi River,” I said.
“Almost as bad?” Czito asked.
“On the Hat Island bend it’d be pitch black with a fog so thick you couldn’t see the back of your hand.” “And this… is… better?” Czito asked. “I can still see the back of my hand,” I replied.
We went through the oval. It was something like a great smoke ring of dust and rocks. Several fragments struck the prow of the airship, or, that is, struck the magnetic field surrounding us; the fragments f lashed away in streaks of light and sparks. Occasionally one of the striking fragments would make a sound exactly like that made by a ricocheting bullet. “We’re almost through it,” Czito said. “We’re going to make it!” “Of course we’re going to make it,” I said. Then suddenly we were clear of the debris field. Ahead was only black sky and stars. I looked back at Tesla. He was standing at the control board, looking aft through the pilothouse windows. I turned all the way around and saw the field of asteroid fragments which we had just come through, and felt a great relief to be out of it. “What a show!” Houdini said.
Tesla came over to the little tin box mounted on the pedestal and studied it for several seconds, all the while pivoting its steel rod all around in front of us. The incandescent light bulb on top of the tin box remained dark. “Something’s wrong,” Tesla said.
“With your machine?” I asked.
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“No,” Tesla said. “I doubt anything is wrong with this device.”
Tesla kept pivoting the tin box around at various angles, but the light bulb remained dark. I watched him do this awhile longer, and then an odd, sick kind of expression came across his face. He started turning the tin box around on its pedestal until it was pointing back in the direction we had come. That was when we all saw it.
The light bulb f lashed very faintly. Its steel rod was pointed directly back at the asteroid debris field. “The crystal!” Tesla whispered. “They have jettisoned the crystal into the asteroid.” I stopped our ship and turned her about 180 degrees. “They must have realized we would overtake them before they reached Mars,” Tesla said. “They know we will turn back for the crystal.” “They just showed their hand,” I said, “and it warn’t four aces!” “Yes,” Tesla said. “They seem to have folded.” “So I’m going to have to take us back through the rock quarry,” I said. “I’m afraid so,” Tesla said. “Well… hold on, then.”
I touched the accelerator pedal and we rapidly approached the debris field of the asteroid. Actually, it looked as though the debris field had reversed direction and was moving toward us again, instead of us moving toward it. Tesla was adjusting the position of the little tin box on its pedestal again. I took us back through the big ‘O’ of rocks and dust and plunged us deeper into the asteroid field. As rocks and dust began whizzing around us, I slowed us down and tried to approximate the speed of the hurtling asteroid fragments. There was only one problem: none of the fragments were moving at exactly the same speed. I even saw a couple of fragments collide with each other and ex- plode into still smaller fragments, and these scattered every which way before us. I steered up and around this collision and managed to dodge most of the flying rock; some of the small pieces reached the vicinity of our ship but were thrown away like pebbles from a sling-shot by the electric force field surrounding us. “Go down a bit, Mark,” Tesla said.
I obeyed his order, and passed by several rocky fragments. Up ahead was the main asteroid body. Tesla said, “I think they have planted the crystal on or inside that asteroid.”
I slowly brought our airship toward the surface of the asteroid; the great, pitted mass grew in size until its surface filled the pilothouse windows. I could’ve stretched my arms out straight on either side, and my view of the asteroid would’ve stretched from my right finger tip to my left. We stood there looking at the pitted, cratered surface of that immense gray rock. Tesla pivoted the tin box’s steel rod toward the asteroid’s surface, and moved it about until the little light bulb got to flashing with some enthusiasm.
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“It is down there,” Tesla said. “Right down there, probably somewhere in that crater.” Tesla pointed out the crater to me; it was a little black spot on the surface of the rock. He took the spy-glass and looked through it, then gave the spy- glass to me. I looked through it and saw that the black spot was a crater, although I had no clear idea how big it was. “I will have to go down to the surface of the asteroid,” Tesla said. “Go down?” I asked. “How? In that lifeboat down on the lower deck?” “No,” Tesla said. “The crystal may be lodged in a space where the emergency craft could not enter. I will have to go out on to the surface of the asteroid dressed in an anti-gravity pressure suit. Keep the ship in this position. Mr. Czito, come with me.”
Tesla descended the stairs with Czito following behind him. I looked over at Lillie, Houdini, and Ade. “Well?” I said. “You three wanted to see an airship. Now you’re getting to do that and a little bit more.” “We meant no harm, Mr. Clemens,” George Ade said. “We were only doing what we thought was right.”
“Said the burglar
to the man with an empty house,” I replied.
“Who is the burglar, Mr. Clemens?” Lillie asked. “I would say the man who steals the truth is the greatest burglar of them all.” “Why, certainly, young lady!” I said. “If you are only discovering that, you are a very slow learner. Our world has always been ruled by thieves and burglars and liars and murderers. And they have always corrupted us, their subjects. Anyway, personally, I do not really object to your burglary, I only object to your self-righteous justification of it. You did not do it because it was ‘right’.” “No?” Lillie asked. “Then why do you say I did it?”
“Damned if I know,” I said. “And I don’t think you know the real reason you did it, either. I’d say we rarely know the real reason we do any of the things that we do.” “I’d say you are an expert at lying to yourself,” Lillie said.
“Now that,” I said, “is a truth. How rare. I shall stand here and contem- plate it.”
Down below on the lower deck, Tesla put on one of the pressure suits that had been hanging from the ship’s bulkhead. Czito helped to buckle Tesla into the suit. Then Czito slipped the straps to a box-like device over and around Tesla’s shoulders, so that it was secured to Tesla’s back like the knapsack of a mountain climber or a soldier. The box-like knapsack contained a tank of compressed air and an electrical anti-gravity machine—a miniature of the en- gine that powered the airship. Two little lightning rods or “aerial conductors” rose from the top of the knapsack by several inches. Then Czito crowned Tesla
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with one of those glass-bubble helmets, and fitted and screwed it into a metal ring-collar made into Tesla’s air pressure suit; this gave Tesla’s whole garment a hermetic seal.
Tesla f lipped a little switch on a control panel attached to the chest and belt of his suit. There was a faint whine, the sound of the suit’s electrical system going to work. Tesla spoke to Czito through a telephone-type speaker built into the base of his glass helmet: “Stand by the wireless telephone in the pilothouse. If anything happens to me or the crystal, I will give you the order to depart for Earth instantly. You will carry out that order no matter how much Mark Twain objects. Do you understand, Mr. Czito?” “Yes, Mr. Tesla. I’ll do exactly as you say.”