Wonder of the Worlds

by Sesh Heri

  I turned forward and kept my foot on the accelerator pedal. I could see the rainbow colored light wash over the prow of the airship. I turned back around, and saw that the crystal was bigger than ever and spinning rapidly on an axis.

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  It seemed to be rolling toward us! I glanced around the pilothouse and saw that Tesla was gone; only Czito and Houdini stood behind me, silhouettes against a f lashing rainbow colored blaze. An instant later, I saw Tesla bound up the steps with Lillie and Ade coming up behind him. I turned forward again. The stars in front of us had tightened their ring and had almost compressed into a ball of light. Czito said, “Mr. Tesla, the—”

  His words were cut off. The Master Crystal exploded behind us in an almost blinding burst of white light—almost blinding for none of us were looking directly at the crystal when it exploded. The explosion must have been titanic, but at first it made no sound. Then there came a terrible crackling electrical noise and it engulfed the whole ship and grew to an almost unbearable roar. I kept my foot on the accelerator pedal. The field of stars in front of us shrank to a single point of light. Behind us, from the exploding crystal, came a storm of fire reaching out in great long arms to engulf our ship. I felt a tugging on the pilot’s wheel and a vibration, but I kept my foot on the accelerator pedal. Suddenly, the point of light ahead winked out, as did the fire behind. Czito said, “We are moving faster than light.”

  Tesla said,” Yes, the starlight has shifted beyond the range of ultraviolet. You may slow the ship down now, Mark.” I took my foot off the accelerator pedal and hit the brake pedal. There was a burst of light in front of me; the universe opened up; the stars expanded apart, and, with them, the Earth came out as a great blue-white sphere hurtling toward us! “Looka there!” I shouted. “We’re coming in! We’re coming home! Yee- how! Damned if I ain’t a white-hot rocket from hell!” I piloted the airship straight for Earth. In a moment, Czito said, “Fire. I smell fire!”

  Tesla and Czito rushed down the stairs to the ship’s engines, with Houdini, Ade and Lillie following close behind. On the upper deck, Tesla slid back the door of the engine. Black smoke rolled out of the cabinet. An electrical fire was raging inside. Tesla said, “The explosion of the crystal must’ve destroyed the aerial con- ductors and instantly overcharged the drive crystal so that it is now drawing power uncontrollably.” “Can’t you remove it?” Ade asked.

  “No,” Tesla said. “It would explode. We must abandon ship. Everyone to the lower deck—to the escape craft!” Lillie, Houdini, Ade, and Czito began descending through the hatchway to the lower deck, while Tesla rushed forward into the pilothouse. As Tesla approached me, I was steering the airship into the upper reaches of Earth’s atmosphere.

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  “Mark!” Tesla shouted. “We must abandon ship!” “What are you talking about? I can land this bird on a dime!” “The drive crystal’s going to explode!” “Why’nt you say so? Let’s get the hell out of here!”

  Tesla and I ran down the stairs of the pilothouse and slid down the ladder to the lower deck. Czito already had the glass dome of the escape craft hinged open. We all climbed inside, Tesla at the pilot’s wheel with me beside him, Czito and Houdini in the seat behind us, and, in the back seat, Lillie and Ade. Tesla pushed a button on the board in front of us, and the glass dome pivoted over our heads and closed down on the top of the craft in a hermetic seal. Tesla pushed another button, and a door at the stern of the airship rolled down into the f loor, revealing blue sky beyond the opening. Tesla f lipped a switch and pressed the craft’s accelerator pedal and we shot forward out of the airship like a rocket. Suddenly we were surrounded by bright, blue sky. Tesla brought our escape craft around in an arc. We circled the airship which was rocketing through the sky at a tremendous speed. Black smoke poured out of the opening we had just come through at the ship’s stern. Suddenly, without warning, Tesla’s airship exploded in a terrific blast of electric fire—it was a ball of spiked yellow-white lightning—[ker-BLAM!] And then the fire was instantly replaced with a cloud of gray smoke that rose up and spread itself out in a long swath. Out of the cloud I could see black particles come raining down—the particles were all that was left of the airship. “Well,” I said, “that’s it.”

  “That’s all,” Tesla said. “The work of half a lifetime.”

  We watched the pieces of the airship rain down as its ruined mass contin- ued forward above the surface of the Earth. Then the black rain stopped, and Tesla piloted the airship away from the explosion and turned us toward the south. We had come into the Earth’s atmosphere somewhere over the general vicinity of the North Pole. Below lay a white, frozen wasteland. Then, in a minute or two, we saw a timberline in the distance. At our height it was only a black line. We approached that black line and it became a forest, glittering with lakes. We were in the northern reaches of Canada, rapidly moving south. Then, unmistakably, a familiar shape came into view way down below through the clouds. I had seen that shape all my life on maps, but I had never really seen it before in all its true detail, color, and life. “Well-a-well,” I said. “There she is—Lake Michigan! I can’t believe it! We all made it home—and not a scratch on any of us!” Czito held up his finger, streaked with bright crimson, and said, “I have a scratch!”

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  “Did everybody hear that?” I asked. “Mr. Czito has a scratch! Mr. Czito, when we get back to Chicago, I’m going to buy you and your scratch all the whiskey the two of you can drink!” “Mr. Clemens!” Czito said with severity, but then his face broke into a big grin. “Me and my scratch—would like that very much!” Well, that was the end of it. Tesla’s great airship was no more, and he never rebuilt it—at least as far as I know. But since that day who can say with any certainty what Tesla has accomplished? He has revealed some of his secrets to a few such as me, but I do not believe Tesla will ever reveal all his secrets—to his enemies or to his friends. We approached Chicago, and the place seemed changed since we had left it. Where there had been a clear and dry and windy sky, there were now clouds closing in over the city—and high above those clouds a thin haze was spread out diffusing the rays of the sun.

  Tesla brought us down low over the lake, skimmed its surface, and then submerged our escape craft down into the waters below. A few moments later he brought us up out of the lake in a sudden splash. The doors of Tesla’s warehouse were about a hundred yards ahead. Tesla pushed a button on the board in front of us and the warehouse doors slid open and we f lew up and through them and then landed inside on the f loor. Tesla opened the glass dome of the escape craft and we were immediately encircled by armed sailors. A naval captain came forward, and said: “We were about to give up on all of you, Mr. Tesla, you’ve been gone so long.”

  “Only a few hours,” Tesla said.

  “Certainly not, sir!” the captain said. “You have all been missing for over a week—eight days to be exact!” “It has only seemed like eight days,” I said. “No,” the captain said. “It has been eight days.” “What is the date?” Tesla asked. “It is Sunday, April twenty-third, eighteen ninety-three,” the captain said. “That can’t be,” I said. “We left on April fifteenth, and we’ve only been gone several hours, certainly less than a day! You must mean its Sunday, April sixteenth.” “No sir,“ the captain said. “It’s the twenty-third.”

  We all got out of the escape craft, all of us a little shaky on our feet. Two doctors came into the warehouse with their medical bags; one was young and looked to be about thirty years of age, but the other was old and looked to be about a hundred, at least. “The President wants all of you quarantined,” the captain said.

  “That will not be necessary,” Tesla said. “Our foreign enemies have mingled with our population for a number of years with no ill effect. I propose that

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  the doctors take cultures from all of us, and, if nothing unusual is found, we be released.” “I haven’t the authority to make that decision,” the captain said. “Let me telephone the Pr
esident,” Tesla said. “Is he still in Chicago?” “I do not know his whereabouts,” the captain said. “I assume he is in Washington. However, the Secretary of War is here in the city.” Tesla nodded. “Let me speak with Lamont.” The captain led Tesla away to the telephone at the front of the warehouse, and the rest of us stood by the escape craft. The two doctors eyed us with apprehension. I asked the doctors, “Where did they tell you we have been?”

  “In the Far East,” the old doctor answered. “They said you had traveled in an airship to the Far East.” “I see,” I said. “Well, yes, we were in the Far East you might say, about as far East as a body can get.”

  Tesla was gone less than five minutes and when he returned he said very briskly, “All of us are to submit to an examination by the doctors here. They will take cultures from us. If they find nothing unusual, we will be taken to see Secretary Lamont.” The doctors and two nurses led us to a little makeshift examination area closed off with screens and curtains. They sent me behind a curtain and told me to take off all my clothes. I peeled off my coat and vest and kept on peeling until I had removed everything but the ornaments of nature, and then the old doctor came in and probed every inch of me from my head to my toe. “Do you smoke?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I replied. “How long?”

  “Oh, two or three hours at a time, if I get the chance.” “No, no. How long since you started the habit?” “That is hard to say, very hard to say.” “Approximate.”

  “I must’ve been nine when I started, but I am not sure. I think I experi- mented a few years earlier, but it was not a habit until nine.” “And how old are you now?”

  “I will be fifty-eight in November.” “You must break the habit. It is slowly killing you.” “Yes, that’s what the doctor told me when I was nine, and he was right!” The old doctor nodded self-righteously a moment, and then stopped and glared at me.

  “Are you trying to be funny?” the old doctor asked. “No, sir,” I said. “I wouldn’t know how.”

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  “I see,” he said, seeming to be satisfied with my reply. “Well, you quit that smoking young man. If you don’t, you will never reach a mature age.” I did not ask the doctor what he thought a mature age was, but I estimated that he believed it to be somewhere around a hundred and ninety-five or thereabouts. “Aren’t you supposed to take a sample of my microbes?” I asked.

  “I am getting to that, young man. I am getting to that. Are you proposing to tell me my profession?” “No sir, doctor. I should be mad to do such a thing.” “Who is your personal physician?” “Dr. Clarence Rice of New York City.” “Umm hmm. Know of him. Know of him. Young society doctor, isn’t he?” “Yes, I believe he has been practicing medicine only about fifty years.” “I’m sure he’s competent. But if I were you, I’d see another doctor with a little more experience. Now open your mouth.”

  The old doctor stuck a stick into my mouth with a ball of cotton tied to its end, wiped it around my teeth and gums and then drew it out. He went over to a table and wiped the stick on a glass slide, then put the slide under a microscope, and bent down and looked through the eyepiece of the instrument. “Um hum,” the doctor said. He kept looking through the eyepiece, and then added, “Bad, bad. Um hum. Very bad.” “What?” I asked. “What are you seeing there? It is a strange thing?”

  “What?” the doctor asked looking up. “Oh, you mean this here? Oh no, your fluids are all normal. No, what I was thinking of was that smoking.” “Doctor,” I asked, “what exactly did they tell you—those Navy boys?”

  “They said you people had traveled to the Far East in an airship, that is all. Bah! I know it is a lie! An airship! What nonsense! Let the government keep its secrets, but they are not fooling me, not for an instant.”

  Well, we were all given a clean bill of health, more or less. At least it was determined that we had not carried any unknown microbes back home with us. We were all whisked in closed carriages to the Great Northern and there we were brought before President Cleveland and Dan Lamont, Secretary of War. Robert O’Brien, the President’s private secretary, wrote down our inter- view. First, Tesla made a statement recounting precisely the events that had transpired since we last saw Cleveland. When he finished, Lamont began to question each of us, starting with Tesla, then me, and then all the others. This interview went on for several hours, and then Lamont announced that we would all be required to sign secrecy oaths. The oaths were brought out, and we all read through them. Houdini was the first to sign his oath, and Lillie West was the last, but sign she did. An interesting thing here: each oath was

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  especially written for each of us individually. None of us fully knew what the others had signed. Such is the nature of governmental secrecy.

  Lamont then proceeded to give each of us what he called our “cover sto- ries”—the fictions which would hide what had really happened to us over the past week. Tesla’s fiction was that he and Czito had been called away by George Westinghouse on business, and Westinghouse had been informed to vouch for this claim. Houdini had been given a fictional week by Lamont, but it was not to Houdini’s liking, as it required Houdini to claim that he had been incarcerated in the jailhouse. It was finally agreed that Houdini would claim that during the last week he had started north to Appleton, Wisconsin to visit his old home place, but had instead reached no further than the town of Beaver Dam, where he stopped and spent several days fishing in the lake. Lillie West and George Ade were a more difficult case. What was to be done with them? Lamont revealed to us that as soon as Lillie’s story about the airships appeared on the front page of that Daily Record extra, the ma- chinery of government secrecy went into operation. Cleveland had Lamont to call Charles Dennis and order him to confiscate all existing copies of the extra from the streets of downtown Chicago. At that same time, Lamont sent out Pinkerton agents to follow Lillie West and George Ade. If it had not been for Houdini’s evasion at the dime museum, Lillie and Ade would have been stopped by the Pinkerton men when they approached anywhere near Tesla’s warehouse. As it was, Houdini, Lillie, and Ade had given the Pinkerton agents “the slip.” But when Lillie and Ade turned up missing, and the Pinkerton men found the skylight window removed from the top of Tesla’s warehouse, Lamont and Cleveland guessed rightly that Lillie West, George Ade, and Houdini had somehow become involved with the conf lict between Tesla and the Martians. Lamont called Charles Dennis and explained that Lillie West and George Ade were involved in some work for the U.S. Treasury, some- thing involving tracking down a ring of counterfeiters, and that it was impor- tant that their absence remain a secret. Thus it was that Charles Dennis assigned John T. McCutcheon the task of writing all of George Ade’s articles until he returned—or at least until he and the rest of us were reckoned as dead. For Lillie West, Eugene Field and McCutcheon continued her column under her by-line “Amy Leslie.” McCutcheon knew both Lillie and Ade’s styles of writing, and was able to imitate them well enough to fool even the most avid readers of their columns. Sometime during the week, Field com- plained of the extra work load and McCutcheon was able to locate some of Lillie’s unpublished writings, including some material on Edwin Booth, which he was able to adapt into a eulogy. Thus, the absence of Lillie West and George West was seamlessly covered over. Only McCutcheon had an inkling

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  of what the two reporters had really been doing during that week of April 14th to April 23rd, 1893.

  As for me, something more than a story had to be told. It was decided by Cleveland that Fred Hall, Paige, and even my family could have no knowledge of my absence. Yet, how could they be kept from knowing? This problem was solved by Dan Lamont who went into immediate action the moment it was clear that we might not be coming back. Lamont took O’Brien with him across town to the slums. There, along Halstad Street, they went through all the saloons searching among the drunkards and tramps for a man who was my exact double in appearance. “It must’ve been a seemingly impossible task,” I said to Lamon
t when he told me what he had tried to do.

  “Not at all,” he replied. “In the first saloon we came to we found half a dozen men who bore a striking resemblance to you. We chose the one who was the drunkest and brought him back to your room at the Great Northern.” There in the room they got that poor old drunk liquored up to the point of petrified sleep. Then they dressed him in my night shirt, rolled him into my bed, and kept him lolling about there for the next week. Whenever he would wake up, they would give him a little food and a lot of whiskey, and he would soon fall into heavenly petrification again. Every once in a while Fred Hall or Paige would come by to look in, and a nurse employed by Lamont would always say my condition was guarded, but steadily improving, and there was no need for alarm. All I needed was rest. “I knew it,” Hall would say, “I saw this coming.”

  When I got back to my room at the Great Northern, my imposter was gone, the room had been aired, and my bed had been freshly made. Still, I felt like one of the Three Bears coming back after Goldilocks had rif led through their belongings, but the one who had been sleeping in my bed was no Goldilocks. I inspected the sheets for vermin, and then got into one of my nightshirts and slipped down between the covers of the bed. “No cigars!” I said. “What kind of hospital is this? Nurse!” The nurse poked her head through the door. “Nurse,” I said, “bring me a cigar from that box in there on the table.” “Oh, you shouldn’t be smoking in your condition,” she said.

  “Nurse, if I don’t get a cigar and a match in one minute, I’m going to have a condition, all right. I’m going to have a conniption! Now, bring me my cigar!” She removed her head and closed the door. I waited with great patience for several minutes, but no nurse appeared. Then I got up, and opened the door. The nurse was sitting at the desk writing something. I went to the table and opened the cigar box.