In other words, if Peary, when planting the starry flag on the North Pole, had been able to dig down in the ice to a depth of only 11 meters, he would not have found marine ice or water but rock: the very skeleton of the Earth!
Glô von Warteck had discovered this when he had returned from India, where he had spent several years studying the Hermetic sciences. Accompanied by several male members of his family and a few Tibetans, he had crossed Mongolia and Siberia and continued further north, following the approximate course of the 80th meridian east of Paris. On the shore of the glacial Arctic Ocean, he had hypnotized and subjugated to the power of his suggestion an entire tribe of Eskimos. With sleds and dogs, Glô’s numerous party had then headed straight for the Pole, passing to the east of Franz Josef Land.
The modern instruments with which the Wartecks were equipped–further perfected by their own researches–eventually informed them that they had reached the northernmost point of the Earth’s axis. There, they had only to operate an instrument recently invented by one of the Tibetans, who had completed his education at the University of Paris. This prodigiously sensitive instrument was nothing other than an electrically-powered scientific version of the famous “magician’s wand.” It could reveal the presence, at distances that could be specified to the nearest millimeter or micrometer, according to the setting of its scale, of any kind of mineral.
The Wartecks and the Tibetans dug down at the exact spot where the magnetic pole of the terraqueous Earth was located. They had electric drilling-equipment, and made rapid progress. In a few minutes, the drill-bit threw up a fragment of basalt torn away from a rocky mass that was covered, at that point, by ten meters and 53 centimeters of compacted ice. Glô von Warteck knew immediately that he would eventually be able to install upon the unbreachable foundation of that secret isle the tower of stone inside which the Teledynamo–whose essential mechanism he had already constructed, in theory–would one day be put into operation to bring humankind under his thrall.
The company of explorers had continued on their way. Leaving the North Pole behind them, they went on to Greenland, which they crossed in its entirety from north to south. The submarine Kaiser-Gott was waiting for them at Cape Farewell. Scarcely had they come aboard when the Tibetans were strangled and their bodies thrown into the sea. Thus, the secret of the Pole was the sole possession of the Wartecks–and not all of them, but only those who had taken part in the polar expedition. The Eskimos would never be capable of indiscretion; they had been transformed into slaves.
The following year, Glô and the same four kinsmen–Wilfried, Glass, Durbox and Krieg–left for the North Pole again on the Kaiser-Gott, with an assortment of white, Kalmuk and Eskimo slaves. The submarine passed through the Smith Strait between Greenland and Ellesmere Island, which had been explored several times by Peary. They went as far north as they could beneath the ice-cap, and reached the point in the sea beyond which the terrestrial and oceanic ice met and were confused. Then, remaining hidden beneath the ice, having nothing below them but a few fathoms of water and the sea-bed, they opened the upper part of the Kaiser-Gott so that human divers and electrical implements could work. The ice was pierced and the men emerged into the open air. They were only nine kilometers from the Pole.
Eight months later, broken up by explosives and melted by electricity drawn from the water and the air, the polar ice was destroyed over an area some 500 square meters. The exposed rock was cut into thousands of cubes, save for a central square 25 meters on each side. The cubes extracted from the inexhaustible quarry were disposed on that central platform so as to form walls and partitions. Construction-beams of iron and wood were brought out of the submarine, along with apparatus of every sort, thick plates of glass, sheets of felt, furniture, cables, electric wires, instruments, casks and barrels of food and drink, bales of ammunition and weapons–in brief, a kind of fort was erected there, 85 meters high, whose upper terrace was surmounted by a crystal cupola with a copper framework.
It was Wilfried von Warteck who was invested by Glô as commander of the North Polar outpost. Glass, Durbox and Krieg were his lieutenants, the white slaves his workmen, the Eskimos and Kalmuks his soldiers and servants. Glô left again, this time for Danzig and Schwarzrock–from which he undertook occasional excursions to France, in the course of which he heard La Païli and saw Irène.
Such was the past, in respect of the North Pole. What would the future hold? For the present, on May 26, the Kaiser-Gott was cruising underwater in the direction of Spitzbergen with Glô and his mother, Diana, on board.
Maintaining an average speed of 69 miles an hour, the Kaiser-Gott only required some 40 hours to cover the distance which, by sea, separated Danzig from the submarine station that the Wartecks had built beneath the eternal ice, ten kilometers from the North Pole–or from Fort Warteck, as they called the complex of architectural constructions raised at the pole.
Even while keeping to the maximum depth that the submarine could attain, it was necessary to take account of the special dangers of submarine navigation in the Arctic Ocean. There was the risk of collision with the submerged portion of a giant iceberg, or of entering a glacial corridor that had no exit. From year to year, and month to month, the thickness of the ice and its submarine distribution varied enormously; a route along which they would have been able to pass a few weeks earlier or would be able to follow a few weeks later might no longer or not yet exist. In the approaches to the Polar Isle–as the Wartecks called the basalt plateau discovered by Glô–the adherence of the submarine ice to the rocky inclines extended to depths that varied continually. Instead of arriving at the entrance to the canal giving access to the submarine station, it was possible to stray into a cul-de-sac, to become trapped in a pocket of ice that threatened to close up after the submarine had passed, to be struck violently by one of those icebergs that sometimes turn upside-down when the part above water acquires a mass superior to that of the submerged part, or, finally, to bump into an iceberg, free-floating or immobile.
At any rate, once it had passed the landmass of Spitzbergen, where the English and Americans were exploring for oil, the Kaiser-Gott diminished its speed considerably. It was not until midnight on May 29 that the vessel’s lookout spotted the submarine electric lights shining at either side of the entrance to the canal.
The canal was an extraordinary thing. The Wartecks had, of course, found a means to capture and utilize the electric fluid permanently present in water and air, without any limit other than the power of their extractors, transformers and applicators. They stored this fluid in accumulators, passed it through diffusers or even condensed and projected it, so to speak, according to the specific purpose for which it was deployed–to supply motive force, light or heat–by means of a single machine. Thus, on the slope of the submarine mountain extending five kilometers south from the station, the polar Wartecks had installed veritable conduits of electric heat, and these conduits, constantly and continuously radiating millions of calories, which fanned out to warm the seawater above and around them, created an opening with a 20-meter radius: the canal,
The submarine station was nine kilometers from Fort Warteck as the crow flies, at a depth of a mere 20 meters. Furthermore, between Fort Warteck and the station, the same warming process kept an open trench free of snow and ice, which was furnished with an electric Decauville mounted on high rails fixed to the constituent basalt of the Polar Isle.5
The system was arranged in such a way that the submarine, arriving from the south beneath the thickness of the ice-cap, went into the canal, advancing slowly but climbing by degrees along the canal’s slope, following the declivity of the ground, to the extent that, about 1,000 meters in advance of the station’s magnetic docks, the submarine was no longer moving beneath the ice but in rippling water open to the sky–for the radiation of electric heat elevated the surface temperature above freezing-point.
Once at the station, the submarine surfaced and disembarked its passengers and cargo on t
o the dock–which was equipped with very comfortable living-quarters–and the closed and heated wagons of the electric Decauville carried the people and their luggage swiftly to Fort Warteck, between two high walls of streaming ice, whose surface melted and froze incessantly, the heat of the conduits radiating to the left, right and upwards to a precise and invariable limit.
Every time it snowed, a bizarre phenomenon was produced: all along the Decauville’s trench, the snow stopped dead at a certain height along a certain width, there being transformed into rain–but to the left and the right, on the shelf, it continued to fall as snow, thus making a tunnel of rain with a basalt floor, walls of ice and a roof of snow. But that was only one of numerous strange events caused in the vicinity of the pole by the Wartecks’ scientific installations.
Having unloaded those people and goods that were to be disembarked, the submarine usually submerged and went to rest underwater in one of three magnetic berths, connected by watertight tubes to the submarine part of the station–which was itself connected to the terrestrial part by elevators and hoists. This was not, however, the procedure followed by the Kaiser-Gott when it arrived in the submarine harbor shortly before 1 a.m. on May 30. It did not surface or unload its passengers and cargo. Instead, by means of a maneuver to which he was doubtless accustomed, the commander of the Kaiser-Gott–the Durbox of the polar expedition–took his submarine directly and very smoothly into the central berth.
As soon as the spindle-shaped vessel came to rest, a hermetically sealed tube extended like an accordion from the wall of the submarine station into the water of the basin. Sliding on rails, it quickly engaged its terminal metal rectangle with a magnetic rectangle hollowed out in the flank of the Kaiser-Gott. This hatch opened inwards, while the tube’s end-piece opened in its turn; communication was thus established between the earthbound and the sea-voyagers.
A man marched rapidly through the tube, which was illuminated by a series of electric lights, coming out of the station and into the submarine. Durbox was waiting for him in the compartment where the triple doors of steel had opened. He extended his hand. In German–for the Wartecks only spoke German between themselves, although centuries of cross-breeding had made them into a Mongolo-Russo-German hybrid so difficult to classify that Doctor Pascal and Emile Zola would have exercised their science of atavistic progress in vain 6–he said: “Good morning, Glass, we’ve brought the Supreme Lord. Is the commandant well?”
“Wilfried’s well. His cold’s over. I was worried about him for two days, but he avoided bronchitis. He’s out of bed.” Glass was a physician and surgeon, with diplomas from the faculties of Paris and Berlin.
“He’s following you?” Durbox asked.
“Yes–Krieg, too.”
“Everything’s ready, then.”
“Everything.” After a slight hesitation, Glass lowered his voice to ask: “Is the Supreme Lord in a scientific state?” In ordinary language, that meant: “Is Glô reading our thoughts at present?”
“No,” Durbox replied, curtly. “I know that he has to rest his brain. I heard him say so to his mother. He’s saving all his power for the day of the Teledynamo.”
“That’s still June 10?”
“Yes, I believe so.”
“And... are there women aboard?”
“No,” said Durbox.
“Too bad! Wilfried, Krieg and I were counting on... Eskimo women eventually become repulsive. Such stupid brutes, with oily skin...”
Durbox burst out laughing. Clapping his cousin on the shoulder–for Wilfried, Krieg, Glass and Durbox were the sons of four sisters–he said, cheerfully: “I’m just teasing you, Glass! All the serving girls from Schwarzrock are on board–and I imagine that by June 10, the Supreme Lord will have no further need of experiments in vivisection. You can–we can–have our choice of servants who are slightly better than Eskimos, from every point of view...”
“Teufel!” Glass swore. “I should think so!”
Footsteps sounded on the hard aluminum sheets that were set crosswise to form the floor of the long tube, and a shadow was projected through the open doorway to where the two men were standing. They shut up, turned round and clicked their heels as they gave a military salute.
Wilfried, the commander of the Pole, arrived at a rapid stride, followed by the chief electrician, Krieg. Krieg joined Glass, the chief of staff and Durbox, the captain of the Kaiser-Gott, in the first compartment, but Wilfried passed through without stopping, offering a stiff salute before disappearing into the vessel’s interior through an iron door, which closed automatically behind him.
V. At Cape Flora
The Uberalles, commanded by Jacques Saincer and carrying Laurence Païli, Grisyl, Professor Lourmel, Rupert VI, the pilots and mechanics from the RC1 and RC2–and the dismantled aircraft themselves, in well-padded sections of the hold–in addition to the crew of 12 Englishmen and Frenchmen necessary to operate the captured submarine, left Le Havre on the morning of May 31 and headed north. In the meantime, the RC3 and RC4, carrying Saint-Clair, Girard and their associates, were heading for Cape Flora in Franz Josef Land. This was some five days after the Kaiser-Gott had already arrived at the North Pole.
“I’ve been from Le Havre to Spitzbergen,” Jacques Saincer had said, “in much the same time that the Kaiser-Gott will take to go from Danzig to Spitzbergen”–among other things, Rupert VI, in a hypnotic trance, had revealed the name of the Wartecks’ second submarine–“and Cape Flora and Spitzbergen are about the same distance from Le Havre. At this time of year, it’s often the case that the southern part of Franz Josef Land, including Cape Flora, is free of winter ice. Nothing should delay me. I’ll be at the Cape two or three days after leaving Le Havre.”
“If nothing delayed Lucifer,” the Nyctalope had concluded, “he’s been at the Pole for five days; he’ll have been there for seven or eight when you rejoin me at Cape Flora. He’ll have been able to do a lot of work in that time!” The Uberalles had not been slowed down or interrupted by any incident; the submarine had only taken 24 hours longer than Saint-Clair and his companions had taken to go from Le Havre to Cape Flora.
The Nyctalope had put two aircraft and eight aviators aboard the submarine as a prudent precaution. If any accident were to overtake the RC3 or the RC4, or both of them, the RC1 and the RC2 would arrive intact at Cape Flora with the Uberalles. They would only have to be reassembled, which could be done in two or three hours, in order to carry through the extremely audacious plan conceived by the Nyctalope in consequence of Rupert VI’s revelations. The latter left little margin of ignorance regarding the Polar Isle, Fort Warteck and the submarine station, which constituted Lucifer’s polar establishment. The plan could not be executed, however, without the cooperation of the Englishmen at Cape Flora.
Thus, during the afternoon of June 2, Leo Saint-Clair held council at Cape Flora with Sir Patrick Swires, the commander of Elmwood station and his eight principal colleagues. One can easily imagine the Englishmen’s amazement when they learned that there was a basalt island at the North Pole, upon which men had built habitations, workshops and storehouses–and also that they had installed a railway in a trench excavated in the ice, kept ice-free by electric radiation, organized a submarine station communicating with the open sea beneath the permanent ice-sheet by means of a canal whose temperature was similarly maintained, electrically, above freezing point.
The Englishmen could hardly believe their ears–and it was another thing entirely when Saint-Clair had given them, with his customary clarity, a summary of recent events and an account of the vicissitudes of his war against Lucifer, in France, the Black Forest and the Bermudas. If the affair had not involved the celebrated Nyctalope himself, and Captain Girard, Corsat and Pilou had not been there as witnesses, and Saint-Clair had not announced as soon as he arrived the probable arrival on the following day of the submarine Uberalles, with the illustrious Professor Lourmel, the Grottenmeister of the Bermudas, Grisyl and La Païli, the Englishmen would not h
ave believed a word of the unimaginable story, and would have considered its narrator to be one of those dangerous madmen whose liberty of action have to be curtailed as quickly as possible.
In June, the polar night comes to an end and the days are lit for 24 hours, from midnight to midnight, as the Sun makes a tour of the horizon. There is no nocturnal darkness. Had the time not been divided up into regular slices by meals, sleep-periods and so on, the Englishmen of Cape Flora might have spent days asking the Nyctalope for new details of his extraordinary struggle against the fantastic Lucifer. They had dinner–but they ate little, so preoccupied were they with talking and listening. After dinner, the Englishmen posed more questions, which the Nyctalope answered indefatigably–but in the end, Sir Patrick Swires had asked: “And what are you going to do now?”
“That is my final plan of action,” Saint-Clair said, getting to his feet. “I shall reveal it to you tomorrow, and request further discussion then, when the Uberalles has disembarked Professor Lourmel and Rupert VI.”
“Good!” said Sir Patrick. “But that will be June 3...”
“There will only be six or seven days left,” observed Elias Carter, the mission’s geographer, a trifle ingenuously.
“As the crow flies,” Saint-Clair said, “we’re...”
“Exactly 1,132 kilometers from the Pole,” the geographer supplied.
“And for the Uberalles,” Saint-Clair went on, “it’s 800 miles to the Wartecks’ submarine station. It will take me three days, at the most, to succeed–or to die, for I have no wish to witness the enslavement of the human race.”
As he spoke thus, solemnly, Leo Saint-Clair was thinking of Laurence Païli as much as the mass of humankind.
“We might as well go to bed, then,” said Sir Patrick Swires, abruptly.
“I was about to ask you if we might,” Saint-Clair said.
The Nyctalope vs Lucifer 3: The Triumph of the Nyctalope Page 5