Operation Earthworm

by Joe Archibald

  Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

  _Here he is again, the irrepressible Septimus Spink, in a tale as rollicking as an elder giant juggling the stars and the planets in his great, golden hands and laughing mirthfully as one tiny world--our own--goes spinning away from him into caverns measureless to man. With specifications drawn to scale, Joe Archibald, whose versatility with the quill never ceases to amaze us, has managed with slangy insouciance to achieve a rare triumph over space and time, and to aureole Spink in a resplendent sunburst of imperishable renown._

  operation earthworm

  _by ... Joe Archibald_

  Septimus Spink didn't need to read Jules Verne's "Journey to the Center of the Earth." He had more amazing ideas of his own.

  _Interplanetary Press, Circa 2022--Septimus Spink, the first Earthman toreach and return from New Mu in a flying saucer, threw a hydroactivebombshell into the meeting of the leading cosmogonists at the Universityof Cincinnatus today. The amazing Spink, uninvited, crashed this augustbody of scientists and laughed at a statement made by Professor ApsoxZalpha as to the origin of Earth and other planets._

  _"That theory is older than the discovery of the antiquated zipper,"Spink orated. "Ha, you big plexidomes still believe the Earth wascondensed from a filament, and was ejected by the sun under thegravitational attraction of a big star passing close to the Earth'ssurface. First it was a liquid drop and cooling solidified it after aperiod of a few million years. You citizens still think it has a liquidcore. Some of you think it is pretty hot inside like they had atomicfurnaces all fired up. Ha, the exterior ain't so hot either what withtaxes we have to pay after seven wars."_

  _Professor Yzylch Mgogylvy, of the University of Juno, took violentexception to Septimus Spink's derisive attitude and stoutly defended thetheory of adiabatic expansion. It was at this juncture that Spinkpractically disintegrated the meeting._

  _"For the last seventy years," he orated, "all we have thought about wasouter space. All that we have been hepped up about is what is up in theattic and have forgot the cellar. What proof has any knucklehelmet gotthat nobody lives far under the coal mines and the oil pockets?Something lives everywhere! Adam never believed anythin' lived in wateruntil he was bit by a crab. Gentlemen, I am announcin' for the benefitof the press and everybody from here to Mars and Jupiter and back that Iintend to explore inner space! I have already got the projectunderway."_

  _A near panic ensued as representatives of the press made for theaudio-viso stellartypes. "You think volcanoes are caused by heatgenerated far down inside the earth. They are only boils or carbuncles.Awright, where do earthquakes come from?" Here Spink laughed once more."They are elastic waves sent out through the body of the Earth, huh?Their observed times of transmission give a means of finding theirvelocities of propagation at great depths. I read that in a book thatshould be in the Terra-firmament Institute along with the Spirit of St.Louis."_

  _Septimus Spink walked out at this point, surrounded by Interplanetaryscribes, one of whom was Exmud R. Zmorro. Spink informed the FourteenthEstate that he would let them have a gander at the model of his innerspace machine in due time. He inferred that one of his financial backersin the fabulous enterprise was Aquintax Djupont, and that the fact thatDjupont had recently been brain-washed at the Neuropsychiatorium inMetropolita had no bearing on the case whatsoever._

  * * * * *

  I am seeing and listening to that news item right now which has beenrepeated a dozen times the last twenty-four hours as if nobody couldbelieve it. I am Septimus Spink, and descended from a long line ofSpinks that began somewhere back at the time they put up the pyramids.

  All my ancestors was never satisfied with what progress they saw duringwhen they lived, and they are the reasons we have got where we aretoday. And if there was no Spinks today the scientists would get awaywith saying that the Earth was only a drop from the sun that got a cruston it after millions of years. And they want to send me back to getfitted for a duronylon strait jacket again.

  An hour after I shut off the viso-screen, and while I am taking mycalves' liver and onion capsules, my friend and space-lanceman,D'Ambrosia Zahooli comes in. He just qualifies as a spaceman as hetakes up very little and is not much easier to look at than a Nougatine.Once D'Ambrosia applied for a plasticectomy but the surgeons at theMuzayo clinic just laughed and told him there was a limit to scienceeven in the year 2022. But the citizen was at home when they divided thebrains. Of course that is only my opinion. He is to fly with me intoinner space.

  "Greetin's and salutations, and as the Martians say, 'max nabiscum,'Sep," Zahooli says. "I have been figuring that we won't have to godeeper than about four thousand kilometers. All that is worryin' me isgettin' back up. I still do not fully believe that we won't melt.Supposin' Professor Zalpha is right and that we will dive down into acore of live iron ore. You have seen them pour it out of the big dippersin the mills, Sep."

  "Columbus started off like us," I says. "Who knew what he would find orwhere he ended up? Chris expected to fall right off the edge of theworld, but did that scare him? No!"

  "Of course you can count on me," Zahooli says. "When do we startbuilding this mechanical mole?"

  "In just two days," I says. "Our backers have purchased an extinctspaceship factory not far from Commonwealth Seven. Yeah, we will callour project 'Operation Earthworm,' pal."

  D'Ambrosia sits down and starts looking chicken. "We wouldn't get noastrogator in his right mind to go with us, Sep. How many times thethrust will we need over what we would use if we was just cutting space?We start out in about a foot of topsoil, then some hard rock and thenmore hard rock. Can we harness enough energy to last through thediggin'? Do you mind if I change my mind for a very good reason which isthat I'm an awful coward?"

  "Of course not," I says. "It would be a coincidence if you quit though,my dear old friend, and right after Coordinator One found out who wassipping Jovian drambuie on a certain space bistro last Monday with hisVenutian wife."

  "You have sold me," Zahooli says. "I wouldn't miss this trip for one ofthose four-legged turkey farms up in Maine. It is kind of frustratin'though, don't you think, Septimus? We are still not thirty and couldlive another hundred years what with the new arteries they are makingout of Nucrolon and the new tickers they are replacing for the oldones."

  "Let us look over the model again," I says. "You are just moody today,D'Ambrosia."

  It still looks like it would work to me. It is just a rocket shippointed toward terra firma instead of the other way, and has an augerfixed in place at the nose. It is about twenty feet long and four feetwide and made out of the strongest metal known to modern science,cryptoplutonite. It won't heat up or break off and it will startspinning around as soon as we cut loose with the tail blasts.

  "How much time do we need and how much energy for only four thousandkilometers?" I asks Zahooli. "We got enough stored up to go seventymillion miles into space? We'll cross that bridge when we get to theriver."

  "You mean the Styx?"

  "That is one thing I will not believe," I sniff. "We will never findAttila the Hun or Hitler down there. Or Beelzebub."

  All at once we hear a big rumbling noise and the plexidomed house we arein shakes and rattles and we are knocked out of our chairs and depositedon the seats of our corylon rompers. The viso-screen blacks out, I getto all fours and ask, "You think the Nougatines have gone to war again,D'Ambrosia?"

  "It was not mice," Zahooli gulps. "It is either a hydroradium plantbackfired or a good old-fashioned earthquake."

  After a while we have the viso-screen working. The face of CoordinatorFive appears. He says the worst
earthquake in five centuries hashappened. There is a crack in the real estate of Department X6 near theRockies that makes the Grand Canyon look like a kid just scraped a stickthrough some mud. Infra-Red Cross units, he says, are rocketing to thearea.

  "There might be somethin' goin' on inside this earth," I says. "If youdon't poke a hole in a baked potato its busts right open from heatgenerated inside. Our project, D'Ambrosia, seems even more expedientthan ever."

  "That is a new word for 'insane' I must look up," Zahooli says.

  Professor Apsox Zalpha comes out with a statement the next morning. Hesays the quake confirms his theory that