Metamorphosis

by Sesh Heri

  George Ade waved his hand over to the rope ladder.

  “Just like old times,” George said. “Eh, Harry?”

  “You and me and John T.,” I said. “How’s John?”

  “Just fine,” George said. “Much finer than us. Mac had the good sense to retire from all this.”

  I climbed over the railing and down the rope ladder. George Ade followed me down.

  The moment my feet touched the deck of the submarine I had my first surprise. Instead of feeling a deck of wooden slats at my feet, the weight on the soles of my shoes settled into a soft, rubbery surface. I looked down and saw that the deck was covered in some kind of rubber-like material, laid out in a brick pattern.

  George got down off the rope ladder, and we looked back up to where Jack was standing at the railing of the tugboat.

  “He’ll wait for us here,” George said to me.

  Jack tossed the grappling hook back down on the deck of the submarine where it landed with a strange, muffled thud. The sailor grabbed up the hook and rope, coiled them up and handed them down into the open hatch.

  We turned and followed the sailor to the hatch. The sailor went down into the hatch, and I followed him down the ladder. George came down after me.

  We got to the level directly below the top outside deck of the submarine. The sailor below me on the ladder said, “This way,” and swung off the ladder and on to the first inside deck. I followed after the sailor. As I swung off on to the deck, I could see that the ladder continued down the hatchway to a second deck below us.

  George Ade swung off the ladder and the sailor led us forward down a narrow corridor to the control room, the ship’s bridge.

  When I reached the control room and looked about I was amazed at its size and complexity. It was like no control room I had ever seen before on any other submarine. I could clearly sense Mr. Tesla’s hand in the design. In the center of the room were two periscope stations. In front of those were two plotting tables. Against the port and starboard bulkheads were banks of control panels manned by sailors sitting in swivel chairs bolted to the floor. Forward of these was the ship control station where three men sat, two of them sitting in front of steering wheels like those made for automobiles. A big, blonde-haired naval officer came forward. He said:

  “I’m Captain Wilson, welcome aboard.”

  Captain Wilson held out his hand. He was wearing white kid leather gloves.

  I shook his hand, and George Ade said to the Captain, “This is Harry Houdini.”

  “I know,” Captain Wilson said. “I’ve seen you on stage before. I understand you’re going to help us with an operation tonight. Do some diving.”

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “We’ve got a German sub out there trying to get a fix on us,” Captain Wilson said. “I need to stay here with the diving officer and help him slip us out of the bay without being noticed. I’m turning you over to my executive officer, Lieutenant Nimitz.”

  A square-jawed officer came forward, shook my hand, and said, “Hello.”

  “Good to meet you,” I said.

  “You and George come on back here,” Lt. Nimitz said.

  George and I followed him back down the corridor, reached a hatch in the deck, and descended a ladder to the deck below.

  “Seems the crew knows you pretty well,” I said to George Ade.

  “We’ve been on a couple of assignments together before in this last year,” George said. “I’m hoping this one will be my last.”

  “I’ve never seen any submarine like this before,” I said to Lt. Nimitz.

  “And you won’t,” Lt. Nimitz said.

  “The Cypher is an above top secret prototype,” George said. “It’s no ordinary submarine. It’s an air-sea-space vessel.”

  “An airship?” I asked.

  “That panel you saw next to the ship control station can slide back and give access to an air pilot’s cabin in the bow of the ship,” Lt. Nimitz said.

  “This ought to make airplanes obsolete,” I said, “but I suppose it’s going to remain a secret for a long time.”

  “Yes,” George said, “for another century or two. This ship is completely off the books. Its design is not for use in conventional earth warfare; all that has been decided long ago. It’s all Majestic level stuff, Mr. Tesla’s inventions. All this is only for the war with the Martians, and whoever else might be out there nosing around our planet. Every member of this crew has been briefed and educated on the Martians.”

  “We’re the only such naval crew in existence now,” Lt. Nimitz said. “Each of us has a regular assignment on board a conventional naval vessel. I’m permanently assigned to the U.S.S. Maumee as Executive Officer and Engineering Officer. When this ship is ordered into duty we all immediately transfer off our regular vessels and report here on the Cypher. As soon as we complete all the shakedowns, the Cypher will have a permanent crew assigned to it.”

  “What happened to the Daedalus?” I asked.

  “It crashed on the moon six months ago,” George said. “All hands killed. They were chasing the Martians out of our space territory. Terrible tragedy.”

  “And a shock,” Lt. Nimitz said. “All of us in the Navy thought the Daedalus was invincible. We had used it to battle the Martians for nineteen years.”

  We had reached another room. Several dry suits hung on the starboard bulkhead. I went up to the heavy gear and inspected it.

  “See anything familiar there?” George asked.

  “Some of my ideas,” I said. “I’ve been designing a diving suit for the navy.”

  “That’s it,” George said, “with a few extra ideas thrown in courtesy of Mr. Tesla. It incorporates an electro-magnetic force-field generator. That’s going to be crucial in your dive tonight. You’re going to have to have that force-field surrounding you to protect you.”

  “From what?” I asked.

  “The object on the floor of the ocean is projecting a very powerful disturbance in the ether,” Lt. Nimitz said. “Its field of influence has a radius of seven hundred feet.”

  “And the device is located only one hundred thirty feet deep on the ocean bottom,” George said. “That puts well over five hundred feet of the etheric disturbance above sea level. No surface ship can get near it, not with any safety. They’re taking us down to periscope level when we get near the thing. What’s that?”

  “Sixty feet,” Lt. Nimitz said.

  “We’ll be sixty feet deep,” George said, “and about eight hundred feet from the device. You’re going to have two expert navy divers accompany you to the border of the field of influence. They’ll wait for you there while you go on down. If anything happens, they’ll be ready to lend a hand.”

  “What could happen?” I asked.

  “Anything,” George said.

  “What’s next?” I asked.

  Lt. Nimitz replied, “We get you and the other two divers into your gear.”

  The movement of the U.S.S. Cypher was so smooth we had no awareness of leaving San Francisco Bay behind, nor did we have any awareness of any movement at all. A team of sailors helped me and the other two divers get into our dry suits. The weighted shoes made the suits very heavy, but I knew that in case of an emergency we could get out of them in forty-five seconds by just pulling a lever which would release the top of the suit from the bottom. George Ade stood to one side watching the proceedings intently. After the sailors had gotten me completely into my gear, George stepped toward me and pointed at the breastplate on my suit.

  “Your breastplate here is a kind of control board for you. We’ll be mounting some cameras on it. This aperture on its left side is an etheric compression detector. It will take continual readings of the density of the ether wherever you are and store the information in this little metallic disc mounted down here at the bottom of your breastplate. This dial here on the left controls a kind of rheostat connected to that little box attached to the back of your diving suit. The box is an etheric force-field gene
rator. Before you enter the field of influence, set the dial at the half-way mark. Mr. Tesla considers that a safe level for the intensity of the field out there as it has been measured from surface ships. If anything happens while you’re in the field, if you feel any kind of electric shock for example, turn up the dial. Only do it in case of emergency. Otherwise, keep it set at the half-way mark. All right?”

  “All right,” I said.

  “This reminds me of another time,” George said.

  “April 1893,” I said.

  “Just yesterday,” he said.

  “Could be right now,” I said.

  “All right,” Lt. Nimitz said. “Here’s how the lock-out goes: You and the other two divers will climb this ladder up there to the escape trunk. That’s a water-lock chamber. We’ll close the hatch on you, and flood the chamber. Then you’ll open the top hatch and go out. When you come back in, the procedure is reversed. Don’t worry about doing anything. Your other two divers know all the controls. You’re here to take pictures.”

  “And here’s your cameras,” George said, showing me three tiny cameras he held in his hands. “One is an ordinary camera to record visible light. One photographs in the infrared spectrum, and one photographs etheric anomalies— compressions in the fabric of space. You just stand in front of what you want to photograph and push the little button on each of the cameras’ sides.”

  A sailor took the cameras one by one from George’s hand and bolted them to the breastplate of my diving suit.

  When the sailor finished his work, Lt. Nimitz came forward.

  “Here’s your helmet,” Lt. Nimitz said, handing me a heavy sphere of copper with a circular viewing window set into its front. The window glass was colored red.

  “What’s the red glass for?” I asked.

  “It filters out deadly radiations coming from the device which could blind you,” Lt. Nimitz said. “Your force-field won’t filter out that blinding, visible light. Now remember this: we’re letting you out at sixty feet. That means you’re going to have to take some decompression stops or you’ll get the bends.”

  “I’ve helped Haldane and Stillson write the book on decompression stops,” I said. “When I come out of the hatch, the other two divers and I will take a five minute decompression stop. Thirty feet further down, I’ll take a seven minute stop. And then at the depth of one hundred ten feet I’ll take a ten minute stop. Then I’ll give myself ten minutes time on the ocean bottom. You just point me in the right direction.”

  A sailor took the helmet out of my hands and set it over my head, and then screwed it into the neck ring of my diving suit until it locked into place. Someone behind me turned on the air hose attached to my suit and I began hearing a slight hissing sound.

  The sailor in front of me jerked his thumb upward.

  Lt. Nimitz saluted me, and I saluted him back. George Ade put his hand up with his palm facing me.

  I slowly turned around, encased in the suit. The other two divers were behind me, already ascending the ladder. The operation had already begun.

  I followed the two divers up the ladder and the three of us got up inside the escape trunk. Below, a sailor reached up and took hold of the steel hatchway lid. I expected a clang when it closed, but the steel lid made no sound at all; it just closed and sealed us off. The chamber began to flood with water. In a very short while, the entire chamber was filled all the way to the top. One of the divers reached up. A faint, purplish-red light suddenly shined down from over our heads. The diver who had reached up now began kicking his legs, and floating upwards. The second diver followed the first, and I followed both of them, swimming slowly upward out of the chamber.

  I came out of the hatch and saw a sight that suddenly sent a wave of fear up my spine. Directly ahead of the divers who were already out in the water was an immense field of purplish-red light, flashing and undulating in vague shapes within the space of the open sea. The light cast back upon the cylindrical hull of the Cypher, giving the submarine a coloring of shifting reds and purples, as if it was some kind of gigantic chameleon creature.

  I drifted up out of the submarine and swam up toward where the other two divers floated with their breathing tubes trailing after them. We swam toward the undulating light which now seemed to have arms reaching out and twisting like a mammoth octopus.

  The divers behind me suddenly stopped their forward motion.

  “Can you hear me, Harry?” George Ade’s voice sounded in my helmet.

  “Very well,” I said. “Can you hear me?”

  “Yes,” George said. “Just like you’re standing next to me. Hold your position there now for that five minute decompression stop.”

  The two other divers and I swam in position watching the purple arms of light flash below us. As I swam, I would turn about in the water to watch the hull of the Cypher shimmer with reflected light, and then back around to look down on those purple arms of rotating light. The waiting became tedious, and my nerves began to set on edge. I did not like this waiting.

  Just as I checked the watch strapped to my wrist and saw that the five minutes of our decompression stop had elapsed, the wireless set inside my helmet crackled with sound. It was the voice of one of the other two divers.

  “All right, sir,” the diver said. “That’s the five minutes for the stop. The device is directly ahead of you by about seven hundred and fifty feet.”

  “We’ll wait here,” the voice of the other diver said.

  “We’re tracking you fine,” a third voice broke in. It was Lt. Nimitz. “Go on. It’s directly ahead of you. We’ll stay in voice contact.”

  “I hear you,” I said. “I will now enter the field of influence. I’m setting the force-field dial at the half-way mark.”

  I adjusted the rheostat dial and swam forward and down. I looked at the pressure gauge strapped to the left arm of my suit. I was eighty feet below the surface. I kept swimming forward. I had a lot of distance to cover before I reached the vicinity of the Bell, so I swam laterally through the ocean, maintaining a depth of about eighty feet. The water in front of me seemed to sparkle with little points of light. The purplish-red arms of light twisted and reached out toward me. I kept swimming laterally, buoyed along by my force-field which allowed me to slide laterally through the water with ease. When I had swam what I judged to be about two hundred fifty or three hundred feet, I looked at my pressure gauge again. I was now at ninety feet. I kicked my legs and waved my arms, stopping my descent, holding my position for the seven minutes of decompression. I used the flashing light below on the bottom of the ocean as my reference, but at intervals of every few seconds, I would check my pressure gauge to verify that I was still at the ninety feet depth level.

  “How do I seem to be doing up there?” I asked.

  “You’re fine,” Lt. Nimitz said over the wireless, his voice making a crackling sound. “We’re picking up some interference on the Hertzian waves. Even more on the Teslian waves.”

  The seven minutes went by tediously and then finally passed.

  “I’m resuming my descent to the one hundred-ten feet level,” I said.

  “We read you,” Lt. Nimitz said.

  I resumed my lateral swim, gradually moving downward through the spinning purple light that was now becoming ever brighter. Again, after swimming laterally for what I judged to be one or two hundred feet, I checked my depth gauge again and found that I had reached the depth of 110 feet. Once again I stopped my descent.

  “I’m at one hundred-ten feet,” I said. “I’m taking the ten minute stop.”

  “You’re doing fine,” Lt. Nimitz said, “but were picking up more interference.”

  I kicked my legs a bit and then hung still in the water. The cold of the seawater was beginning to penetrate the fabric of my dry suit. Those sweeping arms of purple light kept cutting apart the black ocean.

  My anxiety mounted. I had no relief but the action of kicking my legs to maintain my position. The passing seconds seemed weighted with l
ead. Then, after a long while, George Ade’s voice came over my wireless set:

  “All right, Harry. This is it. They tell me you’re ready to resume your descent.”

  I glanced at my watch. The ten minutes had just passed.

  “When you get down there,” George said, “approach the object slowly. There’s no need to get any closer to it than fifty feet. Even one hundred feet might be adequate. Just get close enough for a clear view. When you get to where you can see it, start circling it and taking photographs at ten foot intervals. We want to try to get a full-circle view of the thing. Try to spot some reference as your starting-point. Try to…”

  George’s voice was starting to become completely obscured by static sounds.

  “…just do the best you can. We’ll try to keep in contact…”

  Static overwhelmed George’s voice.

  “George!” I said. “Can you hear me?”

  My helmet reverberated with static.

  “I do not know if you can hear me back there,” I said slowly and precisely, “but if you can, I’m going down now.”

  I began my descent toward the purplish-red, flashing light. As I went down, the brilliance of the light increased, and I realized that it was composed of thousands of electrical bolts flashing and undulating across the waters of the open sea. The largest bolts would form into massive arms of light which would twist, undulate— and now I could see that they emanated from a central source— and the arms of light were rotating about this source. The source of that light seemed to be a glowing red sphere; that glowing sphere was my destination. I descended toward the sphere, and it grew brighter.

  I checked my pressure gauge. I was now at one hundred and twenty feet of depth. The floor of the ocean in this region was only about ten feet below me. The glowing sphere was still about two hundred feet away on the bottom of the sea. I kept swimming forward.