Wonder of the Worlds

by Sesh Heri

  We stood there looking out the pilothouse windows. In a moment a green haze or fog formed all around the outside of the airship. “What’s happening?” I asked.

  “The atoms of the outside atmosphere are becoming stressed. The mag- netic field around the ship is pushing them away, and the secondary field being set up above the magnetic field is holding them in.” “What about us?” I asked.

  “Everything within the field surrounding the ship is becoming atomically polarized—from the outside in. The complete and even atomic polarization outside crystallizes inward toward us at a steady rate. The atoms of our bodies are lining up in rows to form a complex crystal lattice.” “I don’t like the idea of my innards turning into a crystal,” I said. “I don’t like that idea at all.” I looked over at Czito and realized that the green fog wasn’t just outside the airship, but was permeating the inside of the pilothouse as well. “That green fog is in here,” I said. “Yes,” Czito said, “I noticed that, too.” “Are we breathing that stuff into our lungs?” I asked. “Mr. Clemens,” Czito replied, “our lungs are turning into that green stuff.” “Mr. Czito,” I said, “is it my imagination, or are you turning green yourself ?”

  “Mr. Clemens,” Czito said, “I believe that both of us are turning green. I believe that everything is turning green.” “We’re stuck in a green fog,” I said. The pilothouse suddenly got so thick with that green fog that I could scarcely see Czito. Then the fog started to fade away, and when it did, Czito and the interior of the pilothouse where we stood were almost completely transparent. It seemed that I was just floating in mid-air above the f loor of the volcano. I could see the rocky surface below and the wall of rock in front of me with complete clarity. But the floor of the airship had nearly disappeared. I looked down at my own feet and legs and found that there was nothing much to look at; I had become more transparent than a glass of water! “My God,” I said, “we’re fading away into thin air!”

  “We’re still here, Mr. Clemens,” Czito said, “it’s just that all the light is passing right through us. Try bringing the airship toward the wall of the volcano.” Czito’s voice had become faint, as if he were far away from me. I felt for the accelerator pedal with my foot. I could feel that it was still there under the sole of my shoe, but I couldn’t see the pedal any longer, or the sole of my shoe, for

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  that matter. I gave the accelerator pedal a tap and we began moving toward the wall of rock in front of us. “This is it,” I said. “We either crash or we pass through.” “We either crash or we pass through,” Czito said. We were now only fifty feet in front of the wall of rock—then twenty-five feet—any second the prow of our airship should have been plowing into solid rock. We kept going. We heard nothing. We felt nothing. We were just moving straight forward into that wall of rock. We were fifteen feet away—ten feet.

  “Goodbye, Mr. Clemens,” I heard Czito say, and then we were enveloped in total blackness. ”Mr. Czito,” I shouted, “can you hear me?”

  In response I heard a faint call, as if coming from a great distance: “I hear you!” It was Kolman Czito’s voice, all right, but I could barely hear it. I didn’t try to move, except that I tried looking around by moving my eyes. I could barely see a faint, glowing white outline of the pilot’s wheel and my hand grasping one of its knobs. I turned my head and saw the outline of Kolman Czito’s profile, spectacles and all. I turned my head to the front again. There still was nothing but blackness ahead. Then, all of a sudden instant, a scene f lashed in front of us; it was the interior of the cavern city of the Martians—a world of twisted and oppressive rock spanned by glittering bridges and arches, and below, towers rising up from thousands of feet on the cavern f loor. I drew in my breath sharply, and cried out as loud as I could, “Mr. Czito, we’re inside! Turn down the circuit controller!”

  I looked over to where Czito had been standing and could no longer see any trace of him. I kept standing by the pilot’s wheel, looking down upon the cavern city, waiting for Czito to reach the circuit controller. Czito was behind me trying to do just that very thing, but having a difficult time trying to do it. He could hardly see the inside of the airship at all. He shuff led his feet along the f loor, reached the railing to the stairs, and slowly began descending the steps. “Czito!” I shouted. “Are you there?”

  “I’m going down the steps!” I could barely hear Czito shout back. He crept down the stairs and shuff led along the top deck until he reached the open door of the engine cabinet. He couldn’t see any of the machinery inside, but, strangely, he could see the light coming from the drive crystal. He reached into the engine cabinet and felt his way up to the valve on the aerial conductor and turned it down. Then he felt his way across the engine’s machinery until he touched the circuit controller and found its slotted wheel. He brought the screwdriver that he held in his hand up to the slotted wheel, inserted it, and began turning the wheel back to its original position. When he had the wheel adjusted, he withdrew the screwdriver and stepped back.

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  “I’ve made the adjustment!” Czito shouted back up to me, but I did not hear him. I stood at the pilot’s wheel feeling very helpless and frightened. But then the green haze appeared in front of me. I looked down at my feet, and saw that it was below me as well. It grew thicker, just as it had done before, but this time, as it started to fade away, the interior of the pilothouse came into view. In a moment, the green haze was gone and everything in the pilothouse looked as solid and real as it always had. I turned around and saw Czito coming up the steps. “You did it, Mr. Czito,” I said, “by God, you did it!”

  Czito nodded, looked about, and said, “Before this is over we may both wish that I hadn’t done it.” I steered our airship through the cavern. About half a mile below us the Martian city glowed with incandescent light. We passed under a bridge which spanned the uppermost reaches of the cavern. This bridge had no support beneath it or above it, and had a span of perhaps three-quarters of a mile. “What kind of steel could hold up over a span of that distance?” I asked Czito.

  “There is no metal I know of that could sustain an unsupported span of that length,” Czito said. We passed on around an outcropping in the volcanic wall of rock and came upon the central part of the underground city. Far in the distance we could see the central domed tower rising up from the f loor of the cavern and the many bridges spanning overhead. It was then that we saw the f lashes of light and heard the rumbles and cracks that we now readily recognized as the sound of artificial electric rays. “That’s got to be them over there,” I said, and I steered the airship over the top of one of the bridges and headed over to where I had seen the last flash of light.

  As we approached, I caught sight of a group of men in uniforms and helmets shooting up toward a ledge of rock in the cavern wall about two hundred feet above them. I steered our airship up to the ledge and Lillie West hove into sight, crouching on the ledge with her back against the cav- ern wall. She was still in her air pressure suit, and, at intervals, she would lean over the ledge, fire down at the guards, and then draw back to her position against the wall. “Czito,” I asked, “can you hit those varmints down there?” “I can try,” he said.

  “Well, try! And hit ‘em hard!”

  Czito shot up the ladder to the gun tower. I looked down at the Martian guards and saw them wheeling out an object that had the disagreeable appear- ance of a cannon. “Czito,” I said, “you had better hurry it up. It looks like they’re breaking out their heavy artillery.”

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  Below, the cannon fired and I saw a ball of fire shoot straight toward us. I steered our airship down in a plunge and the ball of fire shot over the top of the gun tower. A second later Czito fired a ray of electricity at the Martian guards. The ray struck the guards and enveloped them in a sphere of white fire. I could see the guards waver like they were in a heat mirage and then disappear from the bridge. “What happened to them?” I asked.

  “They were vaporized,“ Czito
shouted down from the gun tower.

  The moment Czito fired upon the guards, Lillie had spun about and spied us coming through in the airship. She raised her hand to me, and then f lew away into the cavern. “Come back here right now, young lady!” I shouted to her, even though I knew she could not hear me.

  George Ade had not made it back to Tesla. He had made it to a bridge leading to the laboratory that held the crystal, but a guard ran forward and fired a bullet at Ade. The bullet whizzed by Ade, and he fired back with a bolt of electricity, striking the guard dead. A moment later, another guard came up from behind and grabbed Ade’s right arm. Ade tried to turn around, and as he struggled with the guard behind him, a third guard came running forward and began trying to remove Ade’s helmet. In another moment, a crowd of guards converged upon Ade. Ade swung out with his left fist and batted the hands of the guards away, and then he reached down with one swift motion and flipped the antigravity switch on his belt, and he and two other guards—the one behind him and the one in front—rose up in mid-air, breaking free from the crowd of guards below on the bridge.

  Ade pushed the guard in front of him away, breaking the guard’s grasp upon his helmet. Kicking helplessly in mid-air, the guard moved out of the inf luence of Ade’s artificial gravity field and fell downward into the cavern. The guard hanging on Ade’s back now reached around in front of Ade and unbuckled his knapsack, and, with a sudden tug, pulled it off of Ade. Ade suddenly felt a sickening rise in his stomach and knew he was beginning to fall to his death. As he began to drop, Ade glanced up through the glass dome of his helmet and saw the guard above him spin about and the knapsack slip from the guard’s grip. The knapsack rose up into the cavern like a toy balloon. The guard was pulled upward by the knapsack’s ascent for a moment. Then, slipping outside the area of the knapsack’s gravitational influence, the guard began to fall, and Ade knew that he and the guard would die together. Ade looked down. The f loor of the cavern, two thousand feet below, seemed to rise up toward him. It was a dark expanse sprinkled with count- less pin-points of light.

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  Ade felt his body begin to spin and he instinctively held out his hands to stop that motion. He arrested the spin, but now his body began to f lip with his head pointing down, his feet swinging up. He could see the f loor of the cavern rush toward him much faster now. Ade swung his arms and his head and shoulders came upright. Then George Ade saw a blurred f lash of white; it was Lillie West. She had swooped down from above and grabbed Ade under his arms. Now they were both falling in a dizzying spin—a hopeless whirlwind of lights spread out below them. Then Ade felt them slowing, and he looked down and saw that Lillie had reached for the antigravity switch on her belt. The f loor of the under- ground city loomed before them. Ade could see a dark square structure and something that might have been a road or path. They continued to slow—and then stop—perhaps two feet above the surface of the road bed. There they f loated for a moment, and then Lillie said: “Well? Come on if you’re coming!”

  And she f lipped her gravity switch to the sixth position—rapid accel- eration—and that’s what the two of them did—straight up through the cav- ern.

  Tesla f lew in a circle around the domed tower. As he passed over each of the four bridges leading to the tower’s uppermost dome, he dropped a small metal ball. When one of these balls would land on a bridge, it would erupt into a fountain of crackling lightning bolts, effectively blocking all access to the tower from the bridge. In a moment, all four bridges were erupting in foun- tains of lightning. Next Tesla f lew under the bridges and fired an electric ray at the elevator cables running along the side of the tower. The cables snapped apart; and an elevator car dropped from the side of the tower and crashed to the ground two thousand feet below. Then Tesla f lew up to the domed tower and through one of its doors.

  Inside, a guard instantly appeared at the railing of the upper balcony and fired at Tesla, and Tesla fired back, striking the guard with an electric ray. The guard shouted out and fell over the balcony. Tesla landed on the floor and saw movement to his upper right. He spun about, saw a second guard, and fired, blasting the guard back away from the balcony railing. Tesla stepped forward and looked about. Everything was silent and still except for the Master Crystal pulsing a rainbow of light where it sat mounted on the pedestal. Tesla f lipped his anti-gravity switch and rose up in the air, passed over the balcony railing, and landed on the balcony. He saw a board of electrical switches and went over and looked down at it. “Very good, Mr. Tesla.”

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  It was Kel, stepping out from a sliding panel in the wall. He held a gun aimed at Tesla. “Drop your gun,” Kel said. Tesla didn’t move. “Now,” Kel said.

  Tesla dropped his ray-gun on the floor. “Now turn around,” Kel said. Tesla turned around, holding up his hands, and said, “I have blocked all access to this room. Your guards cannot help you.”

  ”What audaciously deluded words for a man with a gun pointed in his face,” Kel said. “What need have I of guards? Of armies? I am Kel. I do not rule because I have armies. I have armies because I rule.” Kel motioned with his left hand for Tesla to move over to the balcony railing. Tesla warily took a step forward. “Look down there,” Kel said. “A million volts of electrical power are cours- ing through the plate at this very moment. You don’t believe me?” Tesla’s eyes narrowed. “You—” he started to say.

  “Yessiree Bob,” Kel said in the accent of an Arkansas farmer, “that junk’ll fry you dead.” “You!” Tesla said. “That was you—at the fair—in the crowd—at my exhibit!”

  “Of course it was me,” Kel said. “Didn’t I tell you? I’ve been at your heels for years. I’ve been your shadow. Now you will become my shadow when you step upon the plate and one million volts of electricity burns through every muscle, vein, and bone of your body. And it won’t be a cheap sideshow trick, either. You won’t be wearing any cork-bottomed shoes this time. No insulation whatsoever. Take off the helmet! Take it off!” Tesla reached up, pressed the button on his neck ring, and began unscrew- ing his helmet. “That’s it,” Kel said. “Take it off. Take it all the way off.”

  Tesla removed his helmet and set it down on the counter of the electrical switch board. “And the suit,” Kel said. “Off with it!” Tesla unbuckled his knapsack and dropped it to the f loor. “All of it!” Kel shouted. Tesla pulled the tab down on the front of his air pressure suit, opened it up, and pulled his arms out of the suit’s sleeves. “The bottom as well,” Kel said. Tesla pulled his legs out of the bottom of the suit, and then dropped the whole suit on the f loor in a heap. Tesla now stood in his stocking feet, wearing only his collarless shirt and trousers. “That will do,” Kel said. “Yes, that will be quite sufficient. You first, Mr. Tesla.”

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  Kel pressed a button on the railing of the balcony, and a section of the railing slid back, and, below, a rectangular plank like a bathhouse diving board slid out from the balcony. Kel said, “I read this in one of your old Earth books. Your old pirates executed their captives at sea by walking the plank. We have no seas on Mars. Not for thousands of years. We’ll have to make do. Instead of walking the plank over water, you’ll have to walk the plank over—electricity!” Kel motioned for Tesla to step on to the plank. Tesla hesitated a moment, then took a step toward the plank, then another. He was in front of it. He lifted his foot over the plank—then suddenly spun about and grabbed Kel’s gun arm. Tesla felt the tremendous strength of Kel as the two men struggled at the balcony’s edge.

  “Surprised at my strength, Mr. Tesla?” Kel asked, his eyes laughing. “You believed the low gravity of Mars would have weakened us! We are a people invigorated by cosmic radiation! We are the strongest and most willful humans in this solar system and we will conquer you weaklings of Erta!” Tesla took advantage of Kel’s speechifying and forced the Martian king’s gun arm up into the air. The weapon fired, blasting a hole through the oppo- site wall. “You fool,” Kel shouted, “you’ll kill us all! The crystal will
explode!”

  Tesla slammed Kel’s gun hand against the balcony railing, and the ray-gun fell like a lost scepter and clattered to the f loor below. Kel struck out with his fist and hit Tesla square in the face. Tesla fell upon the projecting plank. Kel leapt on to Tesla, grasping Tesla’s throat.

  “Test my system, Mr. Tesla!” Kel shouted, his eyes wide and glowing with fury. “Test my system! As you did for your own at the fair!” Kel tightened his grip on Tesla’s throat and pulled him along the length of the plank to where it projected out over the electrified platform below. “Must I… Must I,” Tesla gasped. Kel loosened his grip.

  “Yes, Mr. Tesla?” Kel asked, smiling with contempt. Tesla asked, “Must I always do everything myself?”

  Kel’s smile of contempt changed in an instant; his eyes widened, his mouth twisted open in shocked rage. The Martian king had felt a sudden force grab him at the back of his neck where the spine meets the skull, a pinching, paralyz- ing force, part physical pain, part nameless horror. Then, before any struggle was possible, the great king Kel felt a sharp dagger-like thrust to his abdomen; the thrust was Tesla’s toe. Tesla’s foot struck on forward into Kel’s flesh and internal organs, while Tesla’s right hand held Kel’s neck in a vice-grip. Tesla saw Kel’s face moving up and away from him, a face contorted by rage and horror. The Martian king’s body was pushed into the air, pivoting at the neck where Tesla held fast. Then Tesla released his grip, and Kel’s head f lew away,

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  rotated above Tesla’s face in mid-air, and followed its pivoting body up, over, and out from Tesla’s line of sight.

  There was a terrific boom and flash of light and heat. Tesla turned on the plank and looked down. Kel had landed feet first on the electrified platform, and now stood upright, trembling in an electrically induced muscle-freeze. His entire body was envel- oped in an electrical nimbus of spiked fire and lightning. Tesla climbed off the plank, and rushed to the control board. He f lipped switch after switch, but none produced any effect. He then picked up his ray gun from the f loor, aimed, and fired, blasting the switch board into a smok- ing ruin.