The Lost Pleiad

by Sesh Heri

“His politics are not mine,” Tesla said. “He is easily influenced and manipulated by people who I not only consider political liabilities but outright dangers.”

  “But he, himself, you can trust, can’t you?” Mr. Czito asked. “If you told him to remain silent on any matters, I’m sure he would.”

  “I can trust him up to a point,” Tesla said. “I can trust him if I don’t tell him anything.”

  “So don’t tell him anything,” Mr. Czito said. “All you want him to do is drive a car— right?”

  “That is right,” Tesla said, “if he will follow my instructions without a lot of questions. However, I know him very well and I know that he will ask a lot of questions.”

  “So?” Mr. Czito asked. “Just don’t answer any of them. You’re very good at not answering questions.”

  “He will see some of the equipment,” Tesla said. “But now that I think of it, there is really nothing for him to see. It all looks like ordinary short-wave apparatus.”

  “Just don’t tell him what it is, and he’ll never figure it out,” Mr. Czito said.

  “He would have nothing to tell,” Tesla said.

  “He would have nothing to tell,” Mr. Czito said.

  “Nothing of any value,” Tesla added. “If he will only listen to me and do as I say.”

  “He will,” Mr. Czito said. “Just tell him what you want done, and he’ll do it.”

  “You think so, eh?” Tesla asked.

  “Yes,” Mr. Czito said. “Your nephew can do the job.”

  “Sava, eh?” Tesla asked.

  “Sava,” Mr. Czito said.

  So it was that Tesla came to ask his nephew Sava to accompany him to Buffalo to chauffeur a brand-new Pierce Arrow automobile.

  After Tesla returned from Buffalo with Sava, he began studying the readings of electrical power surges that he had recorded during the drives he and Sava had taken in the area south of Niagara Falls. The readings had been recorded on the disc that Tesla had removed from the console of what Sava had thought was the short-wave radio receiver.

  After studying the recordings for several hours, and carefully correlating them with a topographic map of the area around Niagara Falls, Tesla called George Ade.

  “I need the car again,” Tesla said. “The ground tests were insufficient. I’m going to need to take additional readings of scalar standing waves in the vertical direction.”

  “In the sky?” George Ade asked.

  “Yes,” Tesla said. “That’s why I need the car again.”

  “Wouldn’t a plane be better?” Ade asked.

  “Too conspicuous,” Tesla said. “And a plane can’t hover. I need to hover.”

  “You can’t hover in a car either,” Ade said.

  “I’ll put anti-gravs on the engine,” Tesla said, “and float straight up. I’ll do it at night.”

  “Perhaps you should get someone to do that for you,” Ade said.

  “No one else is qualified to study the phenomenon,” Tesla said. “I know what to look for— what to smell for, even. In the air, scalar waves have a distinct scent of ozone. I can follow their track with instruments, with my eyes, and with my nose. Only I can do that. I’ll have to do it all by myself.”

  “Someone should be in the air with you,” Ade said.

  “I’ll get Mr. Czito,” Tesla said. “He’s had a slight cold, but I’m sure he’s better now.”

  “You should call him and be sure that he’s well,” Ade said.

  “I’ll call him,” Tesla said. “Just get the car ready for me in the same place as before.”

  “All right,” Ade said. “You know what you’re doing.”

  “I do,” Tesla said.

  Tesla called Kolman Czito who still had not recuperated.

  “What is wrong with you?” Tesla demanded.

  “The influenza,” Mr. Czito said, “a virulent strain.”

  “Blow your nose and get dressed,” Tesla said.

  “I’m sick and old,” Mr. Czito said.

  “Think old and you are old,” Tesla said. “Now quit whining and get over here. This is not a trifle.”

  “What is it?” Mr. Czito asked.

  “It begins with a ‘b’” Tesla said, “and ends with the region that Dante described with such eloquence.”

  The telephone line remained silent for a moment.

  “I’ll get dressed,” Mr. Czito said.

  “And bring clothes,” Tesla said. “We may be gone for a few days.”

  Now, again, Tesla took the train to Buffalo, this time accompanied by his old technical assistant, Kolman Czito.

  Unlike Tesla’s nephew who asked questions all the way, Mr. Czito said nothing, but he did sneeze into a handkerchief so often that finally Tesla removed himself from Mr. Czito’s presence and went and sat in another car. When a woman with two young children passed Tesla in the aisle, heading for Mr. Czito’s car, Tesla stopped her and said:

  “Do not take the children back there, Madam. It is full of disease.”

  Upon their arrival in Buffalo, the sun was setting. Tesla and Mr. Czito took a cab to where the Pierce Arrow was parked: the same garage where Tesla and his nephew had first obtained the car eleven days earlier. They carried into the garage a metal cylinder that was two feet in length. Tesla opened the hood of the Pierce Arrow, and then he and Mr. Czito mounted and bolted the cylinder to the chassis, next to the electric motor. When this was done, Tesla closed the hood and motioned for Mr. Czito to get behind the driver’s wheel. This Mr. Czito did. Tesla opened the passenger side door of the Pierce Arrow, slid into the seat, and slammed the door shut.

  “Now take us toward Niagara Falls,” Tesla said, handing Mr. Czito the ignition key.

  Mr. Czito took the key, inserted it into the ignition switch, turned it, and simultaneously pressed the accelerator with his foot. The Pierce Arrow moved forward out of the garage and on to the street.

  Driving within the posted speed limits, Mr. Czito took the direct route to Niagara Falls. When he reached the open country, Tesla began turning a knob on the short-wave receiver.

  “Nothing yet,” Tesla said. “It is now nine pm local time. Shortly after nine almost every night the electrical surges begin. We are approaching the area of the outermost electrical node from the Adams Plant.”

  “A series of circular standing waves with the center on the Adams Plant,” Mr. Czito said.

  “That’s correct,” Tesla said. “The standing waves shift, however. They modulate their spacing.”

  “Almost like the modulation of sound waves by human speech,” Mr. Czito observed.

  “It does seem to be a kind of language,” Tesla said, “the language of time.”

  Mr. Czito drove on down the highway, the headlight beams of the Pierce Arrow casting a grayish-brown glow on the macadam pavement before them.

  Suddenly Tesla exclaimed, “Here! See the gauge?”

  Tesla pointed to the needle in the gauge moving up on its scale.

  “Anyone behind you?” Tesla asked.

  “No headlights,” Mr. Czito said, looking in the mirror.

  “Then I’m engaging the anti-gravity unit,” Tesla said, pushing a button on the short-wave receiver. A blue glow surrounded the car, and the woods on either side dropped rapidly away until only the starry sky was visible.

  “One thousand feet,” Tesla said. “We’ll stop at five thousand and then continue north to Niagara Falls.”

  The Pierce Arrow continued to rise in the night sky over the star-lit woodlands of upper New York. From the ground, the automobile could be seen as only a point of blue light. From where Tesla and Mr. Czito sat, the earth below was a dark mottling of charcoal grays and blue-blacks. All around them— in front and behind— was nothing but stars.

  Then Tesla said, “There it is! The first major node.”

  Mr. Czito glanced off to his left and saw a wall of light like an aurora borealis undulating in the starry sky. A moment later, what looked like a green ball of fire came out of the wall o
f light and hurtled toward them.

  Tesla said, “Hold the car on a steady course until I get a reading on this.”

  The ball of light flew straight over the top of the Pierce Arrow.

  “Mr. Tesla!” Mr. Czito gasped. “Look at the altimeter! We’re losing altitude!”

  Tesla looked at the altimeter gage on the short wave receiver, and then looked down over the side of the car. He could see that there was no question that they were losing altitude rapidly, yet he had not touched the anti-gravity control.

  “Keep the car moving forward,” Tesla ordered.

  Mr. Czito kept the Pierce Arrow on its forward course, but the car continued to drop rapidly back to earth. At 2,000 feet they pierced the wall of light that had undulated ahead of them. Both Tesla and Mr. Czito smelled the strong odor of ozone.

  “I’ve got the reading,” Tesla said, looking at the short-wave receiver.

  “Good,” Mr. Czito said, “because we’re going down!”

  “I see,” Tesla said. “Keep the car going due north.”

  They were now 500 feet above Goat Island and Niagara Falls. The lights of the Adams Plant shone to the north.

  “We’re dropping fast now!” Mr. Czito shouted. “Too fast!”

  The raging whitewater of the falls loomed before them.

  “Turn the car!” Tesla shouted. “Turn!”

  Mr. Czito turned the steering wheel a hard left. The Pierce Arrow leaned sideways in the air, and wobbled back and forth as another green fireball sped past it.

  “We’re going to hit water!” Mr. Czito declared. “No way out!”

  “Then go in!” Tesla ordered.

  The Pierce Arrow dipped in the air, then straightened horizontally, then dipped again.

  “Right!” Tesla shouted. “Take her right!”

  The Pierce Arrow made an arc in the air and shot downwards, careening toward the falls. Then the car splashed over the precipice of Niagara Falls and dropped vertically, hood down, into the spray. Tesla and Mr. Czito watched as the torrents of water engulfed the windshield, snuffing out all light, replacing it with the furious roar of the wildest of waters. The torrents continued to pour, and the roar continued to bellow until Tesla and Mr. Czito did not know if they were falling down, up, or straight ahead. Then they hit bottom in a jarring splash; it was not a gentle cushion, but a blow. If their anti-gravity unit had not still been in partial operation, they would have both been killed. Nevertheless, they were both stunned by the impact. A minute or so transpired before they realized that they were sitting upright in the Pierce Arrow, their car floating in the open water. Some of the torrential flood had forced its way into their passenger compartment, and Mr. Czito shivered in the wet cold.

  “We’re in the water,” Mr. Czito observed unnecessarily,

  “A mere detail,” Mr. Tesla said. “We have the readings. That is all that matters.”

  “We’re in the water,” Mr. Czito observed a second time, again unnecessarily. “I’m bound to get pneumonia.”

  “Nonsense,” Tesla said. “In ten minutes you will be drinking hot soup. I see a boat coming for us now.”

  “Where?” Mr. Czito asked. “I don’t see it.”

  “There,” Tesla said, pointing to a light in the distance.

  “It’s coming slow,” Mr. Czito said. “I’m freezing.”

  “You are not,” Tesla said. “We are only a little wet, a little cold. It is invigorating.”

  “It is killing,” Mr. Czito said.

  “Cold, wet, night, pneumonia,” Tesla said. “These are mere details.”

  “Details!” Mr. Czito exclaimed.

  “Yes,” Tesla said. “Details. They do not matter.”

  “What does, then?” Mr. Czito asked.

  “That we have the readings,” Tesla said. “We now have all the readings!”

  “All?” Mr. Czito asked.

  “Yes, all,” Tesla replied. “Now take this handkerchief and blow your nose. The boat approaches.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Purdue Plan

  “This letter that Mrs. Roosevelt wrote me about trying to

  get the report on Amelia Earhart. Now, I’ve been given a verbal report. If we’re going to release this, it’s just going to smear the whole reputation of Amelia Earhart, and my….

  Yes, but I mean if we give it to this one man we’ve got to make it public; we can’t let one man see it. And if we ever release the report of the Itasca on Amelia Earhart, any reputation she’s got is gone, because— and I’d like to— I’d really like to return it to you.”

  — Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, from the

  official transcript conversation with Malvina Scheider,

  Eleanor Roosevelt’s personal secretary

  Nikola Tesla and Kolman Czito survived the chilling waters of Niagara Falls, returned to New York, and began an intensive study of the readings taken from the ground and the air north of Buffalo, New York. In the course of their analysis, the electrical disturbances at the Adams Plant ceased abruptly,

  Soon Tesla made a prediction to George Ade:

  “We shall witness a recurrence of electrical power drains around the world in 1933. These drains are keyed to the astronomical cycles of the planets in our solar system, particularly Mars.”

  Ade asked, “Have you pin-pointed the source of these power drains?”

  “Yes,” Tesla replied. “They are definitely propagating from a single point.”

  “Mars?” Ade asked.

  “No,” Tesla said. “This is not a Martian action. It is German. It is propagating from the Harz Mountains in Germany. They must have an installation there, no doubt underground.”

  “What kind of device are they using to propagate these waves?” Ade asked. “They are waves, aren’t they?”

  “Yes,” Tesla said. “They are longitudinal waves propagated by some version of the Bell.”

  “I thought the Bell was a Martian device,” Ade said.

  “Obviously the technology has been acquired by the Germans,” Tesla said. “However, this German Bell appears to be less sophisticated than the Martian Bell of 1915. The Germans appear to be doing a lot of odd experimentation. I do not believe that they fully understand what they have. They may be using a captured Martian Bell, or they may be experimenting with a prototype based upon some knowledge of the Martian Bell. We know that the Germans received some technology from the Martians through one Professor Miethe.”

  “Ah, yes,” Ade said. “The mysterious Professor Miethe. Not Richard Miethe?”

  “No,” Tesla said. “This Miethe is an older man. We cannot be sure of the Professor’s identity, or even if Miethe is his real name.”

  “But the Germans are definitely sending out waves with what they have?” Ade asked.

  “Yes,” Tesla said. “They are propagating waves with their device, and in some cases reflecting waves off of certain objects to produce interference patterns.”

  “What objects are they reflecting waves off of?” Ade asked.

  “For one, the Great Pyramid,” Tesla said. “For another, Fremont’s Pyramid in Nevada.”

  “Only those two sites?” Ade asked.

  “No,” Tesla said. “There are a number of others. I will send you a complete list.”

  “And this plant, this station from where they are sending the waves— this is in the Harz Mountains?” Ade asked.

  “Yes,” Tesla said. “It must be an underground station.”

  “Majestic Seven will have to begin an operation to infiltrate the place,” Ade said.

  “I fear that such an action would be most difficult,” Tesla said. “The active phase of the German’s world broadcast program has now ceased, and I would suspect that they have shut down their transmitting station and suspended all tests until 1933. This means that at present there is no project group to infiltrate.”

  “What do you think the Germans are doing?” Ade asked. “Why would they want to steal electricity? Is it a weapon to
shut down power plants?”

  “No,” Tesla replied. “In part, the Germans are testing the functional capabilities of their device, testing its powers and the limits of those powers. I think they do not really know all the capabilities of the device they are using. However, I can say for a certainty that the losses of electricity we have observed around the world are only a side effect of the device’s operation.”

  “The device?” Ade asked. “You mean— the Bell?”

  “Yes, the Bell,” Tesla said. “Or some version of it. Their Bell device is stealing something else besides electricity, something few would believe or even understand.”

  “What?” Ade asked. “What are they really stealing?”

  “Time, Mr. Ade,” Tesla said. “I believe the Germans have re-engineered the Martian Bell and are testing its functional capabilities by stealing time.”

  “What makes you believe this?” Ade asked.

  “We have been able to verify time anomalies at a number of the power drain sites,” Tesla said.

  “Anomalies?” Ade asked. “Like what? A speeding up of time?”

  “Yes,” Tesla said. “Sometimes a speeding up, sometimes a slowing down, sometimes a reversal, and sometimes a discontinuous leap back and then forward again to the present.”

  “Any spatial displacements?” Ade asked.

  “So far none reported,” Tesla said. “But spatial displacements could also be an attendant side effect with these kinds of wave mechanics.”

  “But you don’t foresee any of these things happening in the near future,” Ade said.

  “No,” Tesla said. “Not until 1933. That is when the next major time node will occur.”

  In 1933 the power drains on electrical generating plants occurred just as predicted by Nikola Tesla. This time, Tesla located the source of the power disruptions at a point on the coast of Antarctica. Majestic Seven convened and decided to deploy one if its interplanetary airships to the site of the coastal transmitter, but as the airship approached Antarctica, it was fired upon by an unknown beam of energy and instantly vaporized. At that same moment, all world-wide electrical power disruptions ceased. The Germans had fired— and then blinked.