by Mike Ashley
I must have been an hour, at least, fighting and pushing my way with no particular aim, only always against the crowd. Presently I heard a roaring and crashing, and the yelling of the people seemed to grow louder; the heat, also, began to grow more intense, and I judged I was nearer to the scene of the fire, for then I thought it nothing more important than a large block of buildings burning. Then, suddenly turning a corner, I came into full view of it at the end of a long street, and, sure enough, it was only a fire — but what a fire! The flames were of a brilliant green color; volumes of smoke rose, fortunately overhead, for it has since been discovered that the slightest breathing of this smoke meant death.
Out of the green flame lightning flashed continually in all directions, and huge balls of fire were hurled into the air.
One of these electric fireballs descended close to where I was standing. People near yelled and stampeded, several being knocked over, and trampled on; with a fierce hissing noise the fireball came down, killing and scorching every living thing within an area of several meters.
Electric sparks shot from the victims; but even as they struggled, the rushing people quickly passed over them, and they were literally obliterated. Then I began to catch the infection of terror myself. The green flame, spreading with frightful rapidity, had come within one hundred meters from where I was, and nothing could stand against it; the boasted fire-proof buildings were worse than useless: the green flame melted them at the joints like lead, and the vast steel girders came down, crashing, killing, and maiming hundreds at a time.
My pen is powerless to depict the terror of the people. No car or vehicle could move in the dense mass of people, and many were being broken up in the crowd; men, women, and children were fighting, screaming, pushing, raving, and trampling each other under foot. Wherever I turned it was the same; lightning flashed, and fireballs descended frequently, and wherever they fell they always left a heap of burnt, blackened, and crushed human beings.
No one seemed to know in which direction lay the most danger, and I decided to try and get towards the river; so even I was compelled to fight and struggle for my life, as the others.
III.
I was rather surprised to find my progress towards Westminster fairly easy, but-this was partly due to my cutting through the side streets, while the largest crowds were all going down the great main roads; and it was while in one of these side turnings that I witnessed a most terrible incident.
It had already been discovered that the airships would not fly owing to the atmospherical influence of this great electrical cataclysm; yet, on arriving at the Charing Cross Overhead Station, I saw that an attempt was being made to fly one of the Southern Counties Company’s aeroplanes, and huge crowds of people were flocking up the staircases to it, and badly overcrowding it.
All this I could dimly perceive by gazing upwards as I hurried along.
In the main road directly under the station, and blocking the direction in which I wanted to go, the huge crowds roared and surged. Presently there was the clanging of a bell, and a shouting, as the anchors of the aeroplane were cast off. I was afraid, and something within me impelled me to draw back. Fascinated, I watched the airship, as the propellers began to revolve; the vessel moved a few feet — and then down it fell, with its tremendous burden of human life, on to the struggling mass of people below, and with the screams of the dying in my ears I covered my eyes with my hands, to shut out the sight, and fled.
At last, I succeeded in getting to Westminster. My object in going there was to see if there was any possibility of escaping by water. The river Thames, as everyone knows, has been built over for some years, being simply a wide subterranean river, used by the British government as a dockyard for the submarine navy.
Erected across the river, at regular intervals of about two hundred yards, were wide traffic bridges composed entirely of steel, and along each embankment were situated the great artificial ice-storage houses, belonging to the British Food Trust.
The great steel-girdered bridges, and the approaches thereto, were one vast congested mass of struggling and frantic humanity. I was swept along in the crowd, and at last I was wedged into a jutting corner on one of the bridges, a prisoner with very little hope of escape.
I could see the river, into which hundreds were jumping or being thrown; under the water the submarine electric lamps still burned, making the stream transparent, and showing drowning people fighting each other underneath — a sickening sight, but I was used to horrors by now.
It was fortunate for me that I was in a great measure guarded by the jutting comer I have mentioned, for I was, at least, protected from serious injury. Out in the crowd people were being crushed to death, their bodies still maintained upright by the pressure of the others. One poor old man came near me, with tears of terror streaming down his face; his arm was fractured, and he was moaning with pain and despair. Another man was bawling. “Oh! Oh! My ribs are broken! Keep back! Keep back!” But he was borne down, overwhelmed, and trodden upon. Still another man, who saw my advantageous position, with fierce oaths tried to force me from it; but I fought with him desperately, and he did not succeed. And so the fearsome riot went on.
By this time the green fire, which had been working rapidly along the river from the east, had already begun to lick the balustrade of the next bridge; and here, again, I feel utterly powerless to describe the scene. At the near approach of the fire the great public electric lamps went out, and everything was lit up by that ghastly, unforgettable green flare; the deadly fireballs descended in showers upon the frenzied people on the bridge; lightning flashed everywhere; loud deafening explosions rang in my ears, heightened by the tremendous reverberating booming of the crashing and falling steel girders and buildings.
The river was choked with the dead and dying, and the fire spread swiftly over all, embracing everything in its clutches, until at last it approached the bridge which I was on, and, making desperate efforts, the people managed somehow to get moderately clear. My skin was scorched and blistered with the fearful heat; lumps of iron, stones, arid flaming debris descended continually. On the ground in front of me were injured and helpless people, who were being electrocuted before my eyes, blue sparks flying from their bodies. Over these I jumped and stumbled in my dash for safety; and, as I passed, I could feel the tingling electricity passing through my veins.
And so I rushed blindly on until I was just off the bridge, and then I was struck on the head by a piece of falling debris. I became unconscious, and owe my salvation to the fact that I managed to fall under the shelter of a great doorway of one of the riverside houses.
When I became conscious again, I was in absolute darkness — an inky blackness — and, curiously enough, the first thought which came to my’ mind was, “Is this death?” But I was alive, sure enough; my skin still burned and smarted, and my head was heavy-with pain.
However, stumbling to my feet, I groped around in the darkness, and speedily felt what I guessed to be a beam of steel. I moved, collided with something, and some bricks and stones came rattling down. Then I stumbled over a plank, and in falling (I shudder at the remembrance) I clutched something cold and fleshy — a dead man’s hand. I tried to find the arm, but came into contact with more steel substance, and at last realized that this man was crushed to death and that I was buried alive? Perhaps it is to my credit that I did not go mad; probably it was because I felt too weak. I was famished with hunger and parched with thirst, but I sat down and felt almost resigned, though if I had had a revolver I should undoubtedly have shot myself there and then. By extraordinary fate I had been saved from one death, yet it seemed only to die in a worse fashion, and blank despair filled my heart as I sat in that maddening blackness. After some time I happened to look upwards, and was astonished to find something which seemed to be an irregular patch of blue in the roof of my prison. My reason told me what it was; it was the sky — the glorious sky! The beloved sky! — And the-new day was approaching.
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sp; Scrambling and climbing over the debris I succeeded in reaching the roof-hole, and after a tight squeeze I was free!
But what an appalling sight met my gaze! This had been a calamity, indeed. As I scrambled into the sunshine there was still an uncomfortable sense of stifling heat in the air, the ground was hot under foot, and all the miles of charred and blackened ruins were still glimmering and smoking, although there was nothing left that could burn; but there was no sign of the terrible green flame. It had passed. But the bodies! Thousands and thousands, so far as the eye could reach, mangled, shapeless, unrecognizable.
I looked back to the heap of ruins that had become my prison. Mine had been a miraculous escape. The building that had collapsed over me was one of the great ice-storage houses; and the proximity of the ice and the river greatly nullified the heat of the flames, and to this I owe my life.
The rest of the story is well known to the civilized world; everyone knows how the indescribable and as yet unexplained something ran its course of destruction in twenty-four hours, and it was on the morning of the second day when I saw the ruins. On that day the noble Rescue Brigades had already commenced to arrive from the districts of Kingstown, Liverpool, Paris, Berlin, and other places, and I received food and help, and further description is needless.
Meanwhile, the peoples of the world are waiting. Our chief electricians must give us the solution. Many of our great living districts are masses of electricity.
The sword of ancient Damocles is hanging over our heads, and who shall be the next?
WITHIN AN ACE OF THE END OF THE WORLD
Robert Barr
The optimism for the wonders that new technology might bring was sometimes matched in fiction by the concern over how it might be used, or misused. The idea that food production could be increased and made synthetically may seem to solve the problem of world-wide famine, but it has its parallels today in our own concerns over genetic engineering. In the following story it was the raw materials for this improved food production that would soon lead the world to global disaster.
Robert Barr (1850-1912) was an important writer and editor. Born in Scotland he had gone to Canada with his family when still a child and later became a school teacher. In 1876, following his marriage, he became a writer for the Detroit Free Press before returning to England in 1881 to establish a London-based edition of the paper. These early days as a journalist had shown his determination as he would at times place himself in danger in order to get a story. In 1892, along with Jerome K. Jerome, he started the magazine The Idler. Barr and Jerome often disagreed over how the magazine should be run but Barr remained proprietor until his death in 1912, when The Idler died with him. Barr was as at home writing historical fiction or detective fiction as he was producing science fiction. He is probably best remembered today for his detective stories in The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont (1906), but his science fiction should also be remembered. “The Doom of London” (The Idler, November 1892) depicts a London suffocated by smog whilst “The Revolt of the — ” (The Idler, May 1894) portrays a future in which women are in charge. — M.A.
THE SCIENTISTS SENSATION
THE BEGINNING OF THE END was probably the address delivered by Sir William Crookes to the British Association at Bristol, on September 7th, 1898, although Herbert Bonsel, the young American experimenter, alleged afterward that his investigations were well on the way to their final success at the time Sir William spoke. All records being lost in the series of terrible conflagrations that took place in 1904, it is now impossible to give any accurate statement regarding Sir William Crookes’ remarkable paper; but it is known that his assertions attracted much attention at the time, and were the cause of editorial comment in almost every newspaper and scientific journal in the world. The sixteen survivors out of the many millions who were alive at the beginning of 1904 were so much occupied in the preservation of their own lives, a task of almost insurmountable difficulty, that they have handed down to us, their descendant, an account of the six years beginning with 1898, which is, to say the least, extremely unsatisfactory to an exact writer. Man, in that year, seems to have been a bread-eating animal, consuming, per head, something like six bushels of wheat each year. Sir William appears to have pointed out to his associates that the limit of the earth’s production of wheat had been reached, and he predicted universal starvation, did not science step in to the aid of a famine-stricken world. Science, however, was prepared. What was needed to increase the wheat production of the world to something like double its then amount was nitrate of soda; but nitrate of soda did not exist in the quantity required — viz., some 12,000,000 tons annually. However, a supposedly unlimited supply of nitrogen existed in the atmosphere surrounding the earth, and from this storehouse science proposed to draw, so that the multitude might be fed. Nitrogen in it free state in the air was useless as applied to wheat-growing, but it could be brought into solid masses for practical purposes by means of electricity generated by the waterfalls which are so abundant in many mountainous lands. The cost of nitrates made from the air by waterpower approached £5 a ton, as compared with £26 a ton when steam was used. Visionary people had often been accused of living in castles in the air, but now it was calmly proposed to feed future populations from granaries in the air. Naturally, as has been said, the project created much comment, although it can hardly be asserted that it was taken seriously.
It is impossible at this time, because of the absence of exact data, to pass judgment on the conflicting claims of Sir William Crookes and Mr. Herbert Bonsel; but it is perhaps not too much to say that the actual beginning of disaster was the dinner given by the Marquis of Surrey to a number of wealthy men belonging to the city of London, at which Mr. Bonsel was the guest of the evening.
THE DINNER AT THE HOTEL CECIL
EARLY in April 1899, a young man named Herbert Bonsel sailed for England from New York. He is said to have been a native of Coldwater, Michigan, and to have spent some sort of apprenticeship in the workshops of Edison, at Orange, New Jersey. It seems he did not prosper there to his satisfaction, and, after trying to interest people in New York in the furthering of his experiments, he left the metropolis in disgust and returned to Coldwater, where he worked for some time in a carriage building establishment. Bonsel’s expertness with all kinds of machinery drew forth the commendation of his chief, and resulted in a friendship springing up between the elder and the younger man which ultimately led to the latter’s divulging at least part of his secret to the former. The obstacle in the way of success was chiefly scarcity of money, for the experiments were costly in their nature. Bonsel’s chief, whose name is not known, seems to have got together a small syndicate, which advanced a certain amount of capital, in order to allow the young man to try his fortune once more in New York, and, failing there, to come on to London. Again his efforts to enlist capital in New York were fruitless, the impending war with France at that period absorbing public attention to the exclusion of everything else. Therefore, in April, he sailed for England.
Bonsel’s evil star being in the ascendant, he made the acquaintance of the wealthy Marquis of Surrey, who became much interested in the young man and his experiments. The Marquis bought out the Coldwater syndicate, returning the members tenfold what they had invested, and took Bonsel to his estate in the country, where, with ample means now at his disposal, the youthful scientist pushed his investigations to success with marvelous rapidity. Nothing is known of him until December of that year, when the Marquis of Surrey gave a dinner in his honor at the Hotel Cecil, to which were invited twenty of the richest men in England. This festival became known as “The Millionaires’ Dinner”; and although there was some curiosity excited regarding its purport, and several paragraphs appeared in the papers alluding to it, no surmise concerning it came anywhere near the truth. The Marquis of Surrey presided, with Bonsel at his right and the Lord Mayor of London at his left. Even the magnates who sat at that table, accustomed as they were to thee noted dinners in the City
, agreed unanimously that they had never partaken of a better meal, when, to their amazement, the chairman asked them, at the close of the feast, how they had relished it.
A STRIKING AFTER-DINNER SPEECH
THE Marquis of Surrey, before introducing the guest of the evening, said that, as they were all doubtless aware, this was not a social but a commercial dinner. It was the intention, before the company separated, to invite subscriptions to a corporation which would have a larger capitalization than any limited liability concern that had ever before been floated. The young American at his right would explain the discoveries he had made and the inventions he had patented, which this newly formed corporation would exploit. Thus introduced, Herbert Bonsel rose to his feet and said —
“Gentlemen, I was pleased to hear you admit that you liked the dinner which was spread before us tonight. I confess that I never tasted a better meal, but most of my life I have been poor, and therefore I am not so capable of passing an opinion on a banquet as any other here, having always been accustomed to plain fare. I have, therefore, to announce to you that all the viands you have tasted and all the liquors you have consumed were prepared by me in my laboratory. You have been dining simply on various forms of nitrogen, or on articles of which nitrogen is a constituent. The free nitrogen of the air has been changed to fixed nitrogen by means of electricity, and the other components of the food placed on the board have been extracted from various soils by the same means. The champagne and the burgundy are the product of the laboratory, and not of the wine-press, the soil used in their composition having been exported from the vine-bearing regions of France only just before the war that ended so disastrously for that country. More than a year ago Sir William Crookes announced what the nitrogen free in the air might do for the people of this world. At the time I read his remarks I was engaged in the experiments that have now been completed. I trembled, fearing I was about to be forestalled; but up to this moment, so far as I know, there has been made no effort to put his theories into practical use. Sir William seemed to think it would be sufficient to use the nitrates extracted from the atmosphere for the purpose of fertilizing the ground. But this always appeared to me a most roundabout method. Why should we wait on slow-footed Nature? If science is capable of wringing one constituent of our food from the air, why should it shrink from extracting the others from earth or water? In other words, why leave a job half finished? I knew of no reason; and, luckily, I succeeded in convincing our noble host that all food products may be speedily compounded in the laboratory, without waiting the progress of the tardy seasons. It is proposed, therefore, that a company be formed with a capital so large that it can control practically all the waterpower available in the world. We will extract from earth, air, and water whatever we need, compound the products in our factories, and thus feed the whole world. The moment our plant is at work, the occupations of agriculturist, horticulturist, and stockbreeder are gone. There is little need to dwell on the profit that must accrue to such a company as the one now projected. All commercial enterprises that have hitherto existed, or even any combination of them, cannot be compared for wealth-producing to the scheme we have now in hand. There is no man so poor but he must be our customer if he is to live, and none so rich that he can do without us.”