Wonder of the Worlds

by Sesh Heri

  “Yes,” Tesla said. “The two moons of Mars are presently on the opposite side of the planet.” I approached Czito, and said, “I’ll take over now.” Czito nodded and went back to the control panel.

  Tesla said, “We will arrive on Mars shortly. I had hoped the auxiliary capacitors would be charged by now, but the damage they sustained was greater than I realized.”

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  “What does that mean for us?” I asked.

  Tesla said, “I am not sure that we will have enough power to destroy their ship, but we cannot wait any longer. We must try to stop the Martians before they reach their home planet.” I said, “That means we must stop them right now.” “That’s right,” Tesla said.

  I pressed the accelerator pedal down. The disk of Mars began expanding and taking on the aspect of a rusty-looking sphere. “Mars,” Tesla said. “Or as it was once called in the antediluvian tongue: Khahera, ‘Word-in-Flesh.’”

  I continued our ‘slow’ approach to Mars. The planet was still about two million miles distant, but it stood out against the black of space as a salmon pink disk with streaks and spots of blue and green. Creeping along at the rate of four million miles an hour as we were doing now, it would take us at least a good thirty minutes to reach the planet’s surface. I had the strong urge to press the accelerator pedal again, but I resisted. I knew Tesla was right; there could very well be a trap up ahead. In a few minutes we began to get a better view of the planet. The disk of Mars had grown large enough to make out a few details. These meant nothing to me, but Tesla and Czito knew the surface features well, and began to call out their names and describe what they thought those features might actually be in the way of mountains and valleys. By and by we began to perceive the so-called canals of Schiaparelli. They seemed real enough at the time, and foreboding. A people who could design and construct the engineering marvel of a world-wide canal system would be a formidable adversary. Perhaps they had a f leet of airships—or several f leets. Perhaps they could encircle us with a thousand airships and smite us with an electric bolt which would smash us as the f lyswatter smashes the f ly. Perhaps they had even more powerful weapons, unimaginable to our minds, weapons which would gather us up and sweep us to the surface of their world—and there we would remain their captives and slaves for the rest of our tortured lives. These and a myriad of other imagined dangers passed through my mind as the f lat disk of Mars continued to grow and stretch itself out against the black curtain-drop of interplanetary space. Then, after a little while longer, when the disk of Mars looked about the same size as the Moon does from Earth, I began to notice something: some of those canals began to break up in my field of vision; instead of a dark line stretching itself across an expanse of salmon-pink, I now saw a series of dark spots disconnected from each other, and only roughly aligned. In a few more minutes some of the other lines began to resolve into spots, splotches, and streaks—nothing but discreet patches of light and shadow. What had seemed to be straight lines earlier were now only a rough alignment of separate craters

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  and blotches of variegated color. I blinked and squinted, but it did no good; the canals were gone. I looked over at Tesla. He was studying Mars through the spyglass. “What happened to the canals?” I asked.

  “There are no canals,” Tesla replied. “They are an optical illusion. And look there. There are no seas, either. See how those blue-green areas are turning grayish-brown as we draw closer?” “Yes,” I said, “yes, I do. But how can that be?” Tesla said, “Those blue-green colors are an optical illusion.”

  I suddenly felt a surge of relief. No canals! My confidence rose. I looked back at Mars. It was larger than ever, and with every second that passed it was stretching itself out further and further, growing rounder and rounder, filling itself out, bulging toward us, transforming itself from disk, to ball, to planet—to world. I now spied something that looked like a vast crater on the northern hemi- sphere of the planet. The whole Martian world had a broken, abandoned, discarded aspect to it. It was nothing like the blue and white globe of our world. I realized that Earth was a joyous, living thing, but Mars looked dead. I thought about the nightmare that I had just had during my nap, and what Susy had asked me in it. As I looked upon the face of Mars, I knew that this place was not heaven. It could have very well been hell, for all I knew. If it was not hell, it was a very good imitation. Czito said, “The Martian airship is approximately five thousand miles ahead of us. They are directly on a line between us and the region of Thaumasia Felix on the surface of Mars.”

  “Where is this region of ‘Them Asians’ located?” I asked. “Thaumasia,” Czito said. “Yes,” I said, “where is it?”

  Tesla handed me the spyglass. I looked through it and saw an even more detailed view of the surface of Mars. Tesla said, “It is that oval circle there fifteen degrees south of the equator. The dark area at its center is called Solis Lactus.” The circle which Tesla had pointed out to me was a mixture of yellowish and pink colors. The dark area, which at a distance looked blue-green, now appeared to be a gray, ashen color. Czito said, “The Martian airship is definitely moving toward Thaumasia Felix.”

  Tesla said, “Aim the prow of the ship directly at Solis Lactus and accelerate by another ten thousand miles an hour.” I did as Tesla ordered. In a moment, he was at my side again. He was adjusting the tracking machine on the pedestal. He pivoted the steel rod back and forth. In a moment the light bulb on the tracking machine f lashed.

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  “There!” Tesla said. “Straight ahead, Mark, straight ahead. We are within only a few miles of their ship.” Tesla picked up the spyglass and looked through it. He stood there a minute or two without moving, and then said, “I believe I see them.” The electric bloodhound mounted on its pedestal was f lashing once every three seconds.

  “I’m going up to the gun tower,” Tesla said. “We must destroy them before they reach Mars. If they get much further, we will be forced to try to bring them to a controlled landing on the planet’s surface. We cannot risk the destruction of Mars. Get ready to move in reverse at the speed of light on my order.” Tesla shot up the ladder to the gun tower. Suddenly I caught sight of a black speck against the glowing red face of Mars. I steered toward it, and in a moment I could clearly see that it was the Martian airship. I put on a little speed and the Martian airship grew in size to a clearly visible black cylinder silhouetted against the red, brown, and yellow expanse of Mars spread out beyond the pilothouse windows. Just as I was planning on moving in closer, Tesla fired an immense, white ball of fire; it sped toward the Martian airship and crashed against it in a silent explosion of fire and lightning bolts. A sphere of shimmering light surrounded the Martian airship after the explosion, but the ship appeared undamaged. “Hold position, Mark!” Tesla shouted from the gun tower.

  Then suddenly, the Martian airship turned about and shot a red ball of fire directly at us. I put our ship into a dive and the ball of fire sped over the top of the pilothouse. Then the Martian airship turned back around and sped away toward Mars, becoming a black dot in five seconds. I hit the accelerator pedal and went after the black dot. “They’ve developed a powerful shield around their ship,” Tesla shouted from the gun tower. “We won’t be able to destroy them in space. We’ll have to try to ground them on the Martian surface.” “Now why did I think that was exactly what you were going to say?” I shouted back up to Tesla.

  I pressed the accelerator pedal and piloted our airship on toward Mars; the planet spread out before the pilothouse windows, pushing back the starry night sky of space. We hurtled toward the planet’s surface, a desert wasteland of red and black, yellow and gray. Then, looking straight ahead, the night sky of space was gone; ahead was only a great tan and yellow plain covered in craters like those on the Moon, and, to the north, a vast canyon of red rock cleaving the plain asunder. In another five seconds we reached the upper atmosphere of Mars. The interior of the pilothouse took on the ruddy glow of the Martian skies beyo
nd our windows.

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  The Martian airship had slowed, and I now piloted our airship down to- ward it, and then, in a swooping arc, under it, so that I could see the belly of their ship through the uppermost panes of the pilothouse windows. Tesla fired a beam at the belly of the Martian airship, then another. [Fzt! Boom! Beroom!] The Martian airship seemed to shudder, but continued on its course.

  I brought our airship closer to the Martian airship as all the while both of our ships descended through the atmosphere of Mars and into a great cloud of dust rising several miles above the rusty wastes of the planet’s surface. We pierced the wall of the dust cloud, and, for a moment, the dust was so thick that I lost sight of the Martian airship. But then we came out of the dust, and I saw that the Martian airship was still directly above and ahead of us, and just as I looked up and saw it, the Martians fired another ball of intensely bright red fire. The ball of fire hurtled directly toward the pilothouse where I stood. I took our ship into an immediate dive, and the ball of fire passed within a few feet of our gun tower where Tesla sat, and sped aft where it barely missed the stern of our ship by what seemed only inches. I was feeling relieved at having dodged the fire ball, when there was a f lash of light so bright it nearly blinded me. Then we heard and felt a terrible, rumbling explosion somewhere from below—an explosion that was so power- ful that it knocked me off my feet and threw me back against the control board where Lillie, Ade, and Houdini sat. I blinked and got my balance and could see that Lillie, Ade, Houdini, and Czito were f lying about plugging and un- plugging switches on their control board, trying to keep up with the f lashing red lights. I staggered back to the pilot’s wheel and saw that we were plummeting in a corkscrew trajectory straight to the ground. I wrestled with the pilot’s wheel, pulling it back and stopping our downward spin. A blur of rocky ground swept by in front of us, and then the sky flashed up in front of the ship’s prow again. Tesla came bounding down from the gun tower. “Mark!” he shouted. “Turn her about! Retreat!” “Retreat?” I shouted, “I’m an expert at that!”

  Blinking and rubbing my eyes with my left hand, I tightened my grip on the pilot’s wheel with my right and yanked the wheel starboard. Our airship pivoted 180 degrees and we shot away in the opposite direction. “Get us out of here, Mark,” Tesla said. “The Martians have attached the Master Crystal to their airship’s electrical system. If they hit us with one of those balls of electricity, they will vaporize our ship.” “Vaporized, eh? Well, if I’m going to get killed I might as well get vapor- ized. No funeral expenses.” I glanced aft through the pilothouse windows and could see a cloud of smoke rising from the planet’s surface where the ball of fire from the Martian’s

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  airship had exploded. The cloud was shaped like a mushroom; it had a central column of smoke rising up thousands of feet, and above it spread a gray smoke cloud in the shape of a gigantic cap spreading out over the pink sky for miles around. Suddenly, another ball of fire shot by the gun tower and sped by in front of us.

  “Get down!” Tesla shouted.

  We all hit the floor. I squinted my eyes shut, but there was still a flash of white light shining through my closed eyelids, followed by a sickening “boom.” I raised up on my knees, grabbed the pilot’s wheel, and looked out over the prow of the ship. We were careening over a firestorm rising up from the surface of the planet. I slammed my knee on the accelerator pedal, and we sped over and out of the twisting billows of black smoke and tongues of red fire. I staggered to my feet and looked aft through the pilothouse windows. We had just passed through another one of those mushroom clouds of smoke and fire. I turned back around and tried to accelerate our ship over the surface of Mars. Czito shouted, “They’re right behind us!”

  It was at that moment that I realized that our airship’s controls were not functioning properly. They were working, but the ship was sluggish in her response, and growing more sluggish by the moment. As I struggled with the wheel and the pedals, our ship continued on her way speeding above the surface of Mars. I said, “Something’s happening to the wheel. The ship’s not responding.” “It’s the explosions below,” Czito said. “They’ve disrupted the ship’s field.” “The wheel’s freezing up!” I shouted. “Help me turn it!” Tesla reached out on my left side, and grabbed the pilot’s wheel. A second later, George Ade appeared on my right. The three of us strained to get the wheel to turn; it had taken the touch of a feather to turn it earlier; now it required the pull of an ox. Lillie, Czito, and Houdini stood bent over the control board, their hands flying from one switch to the other. There were too many red lights for them now, or they had too few hands. As we struggled with the wheel, I looked up beyond the prow of the ship and saw the edge of a crater looming toward us. We were on a direct colli- sion course. “Pull her up!” I shouted, “Up! We’re going to hit!”

  With the finesse of a lumbering elephant, our airship lifted up and away from the crater’s edge as Tesla, Ade, and I pulled back on the pilot’s wheel. We cleared the crater’s edge. “We’re not going to hit,” I said.

  On the other side of the crater rose another craggy range of undulating land. In an instant, another crater loomed before us, its rocky walls higher than the last.

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  Our airship was now plummeting sideways down into a canyon. Tesla and Ade braced their legs back along the f loor and pulled with all their might, while I hung on and did the hoping. We got the prow of the ship up in the air and I pressed the accelerator pedal as hard as I dared. The airship jerked forward in the sky and passed over the crater’s edge.

  But just as quick, another crag on a crater’s edge f lashed before us—this time the crag seemed the size of a mountain. “We’re going to hit!” I shouted.

  All three of us kept pulling on the wheel. We rushed up to the mountain so close that I could see a blur of individual rocks on its cliffs. We turned the wheel hard to starboard, and our airship banked away from the mountainside at a 90 degree angle. We f lashed over a cliff and left the mountain behind. I looked back to see its retreat. “We’re not going to hit!” I shouted.

  I turned around. We were headed straight for the face of yet another bro- ken crag; its top loomed over us. “We’re not going to hit!” I shouted.

  I slammed the brake pedal with my foot, and our airship slowed, but not enough. We were climbing straight up the face of the crater wall, a blur of reddish-brown rock filling our view of the pilothouse windows. All of us— Tesla, Ade, and I—leaned back with all our might, pulling on the wheel. “We’re not going to hit!” I shouted.

  The prow of our airship skimmed along the surface of the mountain face, inches from colliding. Then there was a f lash of yellow sky. We were passing over the mountain. “We—”

  [Ka-boom!] “We hit!”

  It was a rumbling, cracking, scraping vibration which stopped my voice. Sparks and rays of light shot in front of the pilothouse windows. Then I caught a glimpse of a jagged rock f lashing by the larboard side of the pilothouse windows. I realized the belly of our airship was sliding along the shoulder of the mountaintop!

  The rumbling and cracking and scraping ceased and we came out over to the other side of the mountain. Now our airship seemed to lose almost all of its power. The prow pointed back down to the ground again, and the whole body of the airship rocked to and fro as if it wanted to turn over on its back. We started losing our internal artificial gravity field, and I began to feel the pull of centrifugal force on my arms and legs. Our airship was descending in a wild wobble toward an immense plain of white—an enormous ice field—the edge of the southern polar ice cap.

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  Tesla shouted, “Everyone! Pull up on the wheel!”

  Lillie, Czito, and Houdini sprang from the control board and rushed to join the rest of us. Now all six of us clustered around the pilot’s wheel; pulling on its upper- most rim, grasping its handles, yanking desperately at its spokes. The plain of ice filled the view of the pilothouse windows, a white, strea
ked blur; a rushing, solid torrent, promising instant death. My foot hit the brake pedal hard. Our airship slowed, and her prow rose up. The view of the plain of ice was pushed down by a horizon of yellowish- orange sky. “Up! Up! Up!” Tesla shouted.

  There was a low rumbling vibration and scraping sound. Then a “boom” that shook us to the marrow. The view through the pilothouse windows was engulfed in sparks and the shimmering blue glow of electrical fire and great chunks of ice flying up in front of us striking the pilothouse windows in a fusillade. The yellow-orange horizon rose up directly ahead above the linen ice plain of Mars. Our airship was plowing into that plain, digging a trench into its surface as we went. The control board in front of the pilot’s wheel exploded in a shower of sparks. Then there was another explosion: an electrical “boom” and flash of white light. An instant later everything went pitch-black and we were all thrown off our feet. No one is certain what happened immediately after that.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  In Realms of Power

  Away off on the edge of the sand, in a soft, pinky light, we see three little sharp roofs like tents, and Tom says: ‘It’s the pyramids of Egypt.’

  — Huck, Tom Sawyer Abroad

  Night had descended on Chicago. In the streets of the city, gas and electric lights flared up and obscured the starlight shining from above. No one thought to look up to the sky. Chicago was not a city of poets, but of merchants. Everyone kept their gaze level, looking for the next dollar and the next deal.

  Over on Congress Street carriages driven by liveried coachmen lined up to unload their elegant passengers under the glare of the electric lamps in front of the Auditorium Building; along State Street pedestrians strolled in front of shop windows on their way to theatres and restaurants; and in front of the Great Northern Hotel on Dearborn a steady stream of people f lowed in and out of the main entrance, the air around them vibrating with the strains of “After the Ball” coming from an orchestra in the hotel’s ballroom. If anyone had stopped to listen they would have been annoyed, for that sentimental ballad had already worn out its welcome with the people of Chicago. But nobody stopped to listen. That is the way it was in Chicago: the people there were always too busy to listen, and so they passed by, neither liking nor dislik- ing, on their way to the next thing just because it was the next thing. An hour after this f lurry of activity, the traffic on the streets of downtown Chicago thinned out and slowed down. Everyone was inside the theatres and restaurants and hotels; city life had transferred from the outdoors to the indoors. The city’s sidewalks had become almost as quiet as those of a coun- try village.