Wonder of the Worlds

by Sesh Heri

  Tesla nodded, and then stepped through the door of the air-lock chamber. Czito closed it behind Tesla, and then nodded at Tesla through the porthole window on the door. Tesla threw a red-handled switch and a great rush of air passed out of the chamber and through a vent into the wall. A gauge next to the switch showed that the chamber was empty of air. Tesla pressed the handle that opened the door in the chamber which led outside the airship. The door’s seal released and he pushed the door open all the way and looked out. Directly ahead was the rocky wall of the asteroid, shining gray and white in the brilliant rays of the sun. Below and above was the black void of space spangled brilliantly with stars. Tesla stepped out of the airship and the door automatically closed behind him. The artificial gravity field of the airship pulled Tesla back. He turned a knob on his belt and the anti-gravity field from his knapsack pushed him away from the ship and out toward the asteroid. Tesla looked beyond his feet; it seemed to him that he was standing on a black velvet carpet deco- rated with stars.

  I watched Tesla f ly toward the asteroid. He looked like a little white rag doll or snowman. He shot away and shrank in size, and it was only through that shrinkage that I began to get some understanding of the size of the aster- oid; I began to realize this was not a big rock, but a mountain, perhaps three- quarters of a mile in length and half a mile in breadth. Features on the face of the asteroid which I had estimated to be ten or twenty feet across had to be re- estimated as Tesla f lew toward them; for as Tesla grew smaller, those features grew larger, and it became clear that they were not ten or twenty feet across, but closer to one hundred to two hundred feet across. Tesla became a white dot against the gray mountainous face of the asteroid. I looked through the spy-glass and located Tesla. He was speeding along like a shining white bird, the rocky surface below him only a gray blur of

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  horizontal lines in the circle view of the spy-glass. I took the spy-glass away from my eye and could see Tesla as a little white dot approaching a black spot that I now realized was a hole about 50 feet across. I watched the white dot that was Tesla slow down and circle about the circumference of the black spot. I put the spy-glass to my eye again and saw that Tesla hung above the big gaping hole, his hands held out in front of him. He was pointing the tin box down at the hole in the asteroid. He hung there like a little white rag doll a moment longer, and then started down, shrinking in size a little, and then—he vanished! He simply blinked out and was gone. “He’s disappeared,” I said, handing the spy-glass to Czito.

  Czito took the spy-glass, looked through it, and said, “I see him. He’s in the shadow of the crater. Now he’s out of sight. He’s gone down inside the crater.” Czito handed the spy-glass back to me and went to the control board behind me. He picked up the earpiece from the telephone there, and listened. “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Listening for Mr. Tesla on the wireless telephone,” Czito said. “You mean,” I asked, “Tesla has a telephone in that suit he’s wearing?” Czito nodded, and said, “The speaker and earpiece are built into his helmet.” I looked through the spy-glass again. I could see nothing but the black mouth of the hole or crater, but I kept looking anyway.

  Tesla had gone deep into the crater. Actually, it was not a crater; it was just a very deep hole. What formed the hole, Tesla did not know for certain. He has speculated that it was the result of a gas bubble which was expelled some time in the distant past when the mass that formed the asteroid was in a molten state. The asteroid itself Tesla believed to be composed of nickel and iron, and he was fairly sure that it had come from the asteroid belt that circled the sun beyond Mars. Somehow it had been pulled from its course by the gravitational tug of some other cosmic body and thrown on a course passing between the Earth and Mars. As the Martians sped along in their airship, they must have encountered the asteroid and broke it apart to create a wall in space separating them from us. An electric torch mounted on the top of Tesla’s glass helmet threw a strong beam of light into the recesses of that rocky tunnel or lava tube through which he now drifted. The whole passage was filled with floating debris: rocks, pebbles, and dust. Tesla passed through all this, sweeping it aside with his left hand, pointing the tin box and its steel rod with his right.

  Up ahead the walls of rock converged to a narrow tube about thirty feet in circumference. The incandescent light bulb on the tin box f lickered rapidly. Tesla f lew on forward and came to a fork in the tunnel; one cave going off to the left, the other to the right. He pointed the steel rod of the tin box toward the cave to his left. The bulb stopped f lashing; it was glowing with a steady brightness.

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  Tesla plunged forward into the cave on his left, the electric torch on his helmet washing the rocky walls with a white, glaring light. He moved through an increasingly thick cloud of sand, dust, and small rocks. He kept reaching out with his left hand to sweep his path clear. With every stroke of his hand the rocks and dust moved away, responding to the magnetic and anti-gravity field surrounding his body. He reached the dead end of the cave. The place opened up to a cavern room about fifty feet across and fifty or sixty feet deep. Tesla saw nothing on the surface of the cavern some twenty feet down, that is, beyond his feet. Between Tesla and this f loor was nothing but a swirl of dust and rocks. Tesla looked up through the glass dome of his helmet, and spun his body back to cast the beam of his electric torch toward the dark regions over his head. His light beam f lashed upon a metallic box spinning around in a cloud of dust and rocks. It was about twenty feet beyond his head. Tesla f lew upward slowly to face the spinning box. He collapsed the steel rod of the tin box and slipped the tracking machine into a pocket on the leg of his air-pressure suit. Tesla reached out to the spinning metallic box and closed his hands around it, arresting the box’s spin. He studied the box a moment in the glare of his electric torch. The box had a hinged lid, but no lock or keyhole to allow access. It was shut tight and Tesla could not try to pry it open while wearing the awkward gloves of his pressure suit. He knew he would have to risk bringing the box back into the airship.

  I stood at the pilothouse windows looking through the spyglass at the black opening on the asteroid. Every second that passed seemed too long a wait, but I waited and waited, and then waited some more. Every second I was about to yank the spyglass away from my eye, and every second I was crazy to keep on watching. Finally, when I had almost given Tesla up for dead, he appeared. He was only a white dot on the edge of the black opening. “He’s out!” I shouted.

  Czito came up and I handed him the spyglass. He looked through it, and said, “He’s carrying something under his arm—a box!” Czito gave me the spyglass and shot out of the pilothouse and down the hatchway to the lower deck.

  Tesla was growing larger by the second. He sped by the windows of the pilothouse, his right hand raised, his left cradling the box. He swooped toward the lower deck.

  Czito waited for the air to fill the chamber where Tesla stood. When the needle on the gauge next to the door moved to full, Czito opened the door.

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  Tesla stepped out of the chamber and handed Czito the metal box. Czito set the box down on a workbench built into the ship’s bulkhead, and then helped Tesla unscrew and remove his helmet. As soon as the helmet had cleared Tesla’s head, he said, “Do not touch the box any further. It’s a trap.” Houdini came clambering down the ladder. “Go back up, Ehrich,” Tesla said. “Tell the others to remain above as well.” “Yes, sir,” Houdini said, and he climbed back up the ladder.

  With Czito’s help, Tesla removed the anti-gravity machine and the air- pressure suit, and then Czito hung the suit, helmet, and knapsack on their hooks attached to the ship’s bulkhead. Tesla held the steel rod of the tracking machine over the box; the light bulb on the machine shined brightly. Tesla took from a drawer in the workbench another small machine, threw its switch and held it over the box that he had retrieved from the asteroid. Tesla said to Czito, “The magnetic field of this box is more intense than it sho
uld be if it only contains the crystal. If the crystal is in the box, there is some other kind of electrical device inside there with it.” “If the crystal is inside the box?” Czito asked. “The wireless tracker shows that the crystal is in the box.” Tesla said, “The wireless tracker shows that something is in the box that radiates electric pulses of the same frequency as the crystal. That does not mean necessarily that it is the crystal.” Tesla stepped away from the box and thought for a moment. Then he turned to Czito. “We cannot open the box,” Tesla said. “It is most likely that this box is rigged with a bomb. It may also contain the Master Crystal, but I doubt it. It may possibly contain only a wireless transmitter that mimics the signal of the crystal.” Czito said, “But the wireless tracker did not pick up a signal from the direction of the Martian ship, so this box must contain the crystal.”

  “No,” Tesla said. “Not necessarily. They probably accelerated beyond the range of the wireless tracker while we slowed down to pass through the debris of the asteroid.” “Then what are we to do?”

  “We must treat this box as if it contained the Master Crystal and a bomb. We must make that assumption. Given that, you know what we have to do.” “Jettison the box, explode it with an electric ray, and get away from here very fast.” Tesla nodded. “Bring the box up to the pilothouse.”

  Czito went up the steel ladder, and Tesla came up behind him. When the two of them got to the upper deck, Tesla took the box, and they went on up to the pilothouse.

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  “So that’s it,” I said.

  “This is ‘it’, perhaps just as the Trojan Horse was ‘it’,” Tesla said. “You think this is some kind of fancy mouse-trap?” I asked.

  “With the Master Crystal as the cheese,” Tesla said, “or something that smells like the Master Crystal.” “So you think your electric bloodhound has been fooled,” I said. “It is possible.” “So what are we to do?” I asked.

  Tesla looked about at all of us, Lillie, Ade, Houdini, Czito, and me. He explained, “This box is probably a trap. If we open it, it will probably explode, killing us all. If we leave it behind here in this asteroid field, it might actually contain the Master Crystal, and the Martians could return, retrieve it, and deactivate the bomb somehow. Taking it with us or leaving it behind, either way is unacceptable.” “Are there no other alternatives?” George Ade asked.

  “Only one,” Tesla said. “We can jettison the box, and explode it with an electric ray.” “Then why don’t we do that?” Ade asked.

  “If the Master Crystal is in the box, it would explode, and the explosion would be immense. It could engulf and destroy our ship, unless we moved away rapidly at the instant of the explosion. It would be a precise maneuver. Mark Twain and I have discussed this and believe that we can do it. However, there are no guarantees. What do you all say? Should we try it?” I said, “We must try it.”

  “I agree,” Lillie West said.

  “I agree, as well,” George Ade said. “Ehrich?” Tesla asked.

  Houdini shrugged. “Do it, don’t do it, sounds like we’re all going to get fried no matter what. What are you askin’ us for, Mr. Tesla? You know we gotta do it.” “Very well,” Tesla said, and he walked over to the jettison tube, opened its door, shoved the box into it lengthwise, and closed the door again. “Mr. Czito,” Tesla said, “wait for my word, then push the jettison tube button. Mark, bring the stern of the ship around toward the asteroid, and stand by for my order to move. When I say, ‘move,’ throw this switch and floor the accelera- tor pedal, and keep your foot down on it. Don’t concern yourself with the aster- oids. Just have the prow of the ship pointed at that circular opening out there in the debris field. We will be moving so fast the electric field surrounding the ship will instantaneously vaporize anything in our path. Are we all clear?” “All clear,” I said.

  “Mr. Czito,” Tesla said, “come over here and stand ready to push the jettison button.”

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  Czito did as he was ordered, and Tesla climbed the ladder up to the gun tower. I swung the airship around to face the ‘O’ in the asteroid debris field, and got the prow pointed precisely at its center. On either side of the ‘O’ a great number of rock fragments f loated and drifted about, but directly in front of us was a clear path all the way to the ‘O’. How long it would remain clear was uncertain; at any moment one of those fragments could drift into the open path. Could the field of our ship deflect one of those large fragments? Or would we all be instantly vaporized by the collision? From the gun tower Tesla shouted, “Get ready, Mr. Czito! On my word ‘eject,’ you will push the jettison button. Mark, on my word ‘move,’ you will throw the switch and f loor the accelerator pedal. Are you ready, Mark?” “Ready!” I shouted.

  “Ready, Mr. Czito?” Tesla shouted. “Ready!” Czito shouted.

  There was silence in the pilothouse. Houdini, Lillie, and Ade stood back against the stair railing. I grasped the pilot’s wheel, and my palms broke out into a cold sweat. I brought my right hand down over the special switch which Tesla had pointed out to me—the switch that would allow me to accelerate the airship to the speed of light in one second. I looked up through the pilothouse windows at the gray specks floating in front of a pitch-black sky. “Eject!” Tesla shouted.

  I heard a click and a metallic shifting of machinery, followed by a rush of air. That sound was immediately followed by Tesla shouting: “Move!”

  I slammed the switch-handle down and stamped my foot on the accelerator pedal. A f lash of white light f looded the pilothouse, and then everything went black. I kept my foot on the accelerator pedal, but I began shaking all over and could not stop the shaking. In a few seconds, the dim outlines of the pilothouse’s interior became visible, and, in a few more seconds, things brightened further until I could see the stars beyond the pilothouse windows—and the stars had shrunk to a circle ranged out in front of us! “Mark!” Tesla shouted. “Stop the ship!”

  I removed my foot from the accelerator pedal and slammed my foot on the pedal that stopped the ship. There was a second burst of white light, followed by utter blackness, and then the stars in front of us f lared up and moved back, and stretched themselves out over the blackness of space to their original positions. Tesla came down the ladder from the gun tower. “Turn the ship about,” he said.

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  “Back to the rock quarry again?” I asked. “This is beginning to get monotonous.” “Back again,” Tesla said. “That was not the crystal.” “No?”

  “No. Turn the ship around. I want to see what was in that box.”

  I turned the ship around, and Czito helped direct me back to the field of asteroids. It took several minutes to get back from where we came, for we were traveling well below the speed of light this time. We approached the asteroid debris field once again, and I piloted us through the now-familiar ‘O’ of rocks and dust. I steered our ship through the spinning rocks toward the main asteroid, and as we approached that gray space mountain, it occurred to me that I was really learning how to pilot an airship—the hard way.

  We now all recognized the features of the main asteroid, including the black crater where Tesla had found the box. Then next to that original crater I spied a new one. “Tesla!” I said, “Do you see that?”

  I turned and saw that Tesla was looking through the spyglass. He handed the spyglass to me and said, “It’s a new crater, created when the box was hit by the ship’s electric ray.” I looked through the spyglass. It was definitely a new crater, about one hundred feet across. I handed the spyglass to Czito. He looked through it, and then handed it to George Ade who looked through it, and then the spyglass was passed among everyone in the pilothouse until we all got a good look. “It was a bomb,” I said.

  “Yes,” Tesla said. “And if we had opened the box inside the ship, we would’ve all been killed.” “But it was not the crystal,” I added.

  “No,” Tesla replied, “Not the crystal. If the Master Crystal had been in that box, this asteroid and all of t
his debris would not be here. There would be nothing here but super-hot gases.” All of us, Tesla, Czito, Lillie, Ade, Houdini, and I stood in the pilothouse, staring at the asteroid. Then Tesla finally said, “Take us away from here, Mark.” I asked, “To where?” “To Mars,” Tesla replied.

  I brought the prow of the ship around so that it pointed at the big ‘O’, and then took us through the field of f loating rock and dust again. As soon as we were clear of the asteroid debris field, Tesla pointed out Mars to me; it was a red point of light that looked like a star. I lined up the prow of our ship with that red point and carefully pressed the accelerator pedal. “Take us up gradually to a speed of ten million miles an hour,” Tesla said. “Aye, aye,” I replied.

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  Tesla turned to the others in the pilothouse and said,

  “When we engage in battle with the Martians we’re going to need as many hands and eyes monitoring the coil flucuations as we can get, or we may very well sustain another power surge and short circuit. Can I count on the three of you to help Mr. Czito?” “I’ll be glad to help any way I can,” George Ade said. “Both of us will,” Lillie West added. “And what about you, Ehrich?” Tesla asked. “Sure,” Houdini said with a shrug, “whatever you need.” “Mr. Czito,” Tesla said, “I leave their training to you.” “I’ll do my best,” Czito said. Tesla said, “I’m going to check the engine.”

  Czito looked at Lillie, Ade, and Houdini, and said, “I assume none of you know much about electrical engineering.” “Not a thing,” Ade said. “Nothing,” Lillie said. “I’ve studied many a tome on the subject,” Houdini said, “and have carried out experiments in my own laboratory.”