“That’s Mr. Hearst’s floor,” the operator spoke. “He doesn’t usually have visitors up there unless he accompanies them.”
Crowley showed him the badge. “Or unless you have the right permit,” the operator spoke and cranked the handle to the elevator. The small car began to move higher.
Crowley turned and looked at the pad stuck in the wall. This was the one the operator had scribbled on as they walked into the building. He noted the writing on it and was surprised.
“You’re a poet?” Crowley asked him.
“I try,” the operator replied. “Ever since I read a few poems by Mr. Dunbar, I thought I could do the same. Here’s our floor.” He stopped the elevator in front of the vestibule with a door on the other side.
“You do have the key?” the operator asked them. “Please say yes because if you don’t the entire trip was a waste.”
Tesla held it up. “Which room will we find him?” he asked.
“Room?” the operator spoke. “I guess this is your first trip up here. The key fits the lock on the door in front of you.” He pulled the grate back and stood to one side.
The trio exited the elevator and walked up to the door. They heard the elevator descend in the background after the grate was shut.
“What did he mean?” Tesla spoke as he fitted the key into the lock and turned.
“I have no idea,” Crowley replied. “We’ll find out on the other side I’m sure.”
Tesla swung the unlocked door open to reveal the third level of the building.
It was one entire room.
The third level was not divided up into individual rooms, other than a few closets and necessity rooms off to one side. It was an entire apartment to itself. Hearst had the entire floor to himself.
The purpose was evident when Crowley took in the pastels and Italian wallpaper. His eyes scanned over the expanse. To one side was positioned the largest bed he’d ever witnessed, still made. It had to be a good twelve feet across. Pillows were stacked on one side of the room and a table with expensive china on the other. Sun streamed into a window. It eliminated the need for shades as gauze was over the glass. No expense was spared to decorate this place, down to the roses in vases.
This was William Randolph Hearst’s afternoon hideaway. Small wonder he wanted few people to know about it.
In the center of the room, the big man sat in a huge chair. There was a small table next to it with a bucket of ice. It chilled a bottle of Champaign. Hearst held a glass in one hand, but his attention was focused away from them and to what was directly in front of him.
It was a swing covered in silk. It swung back and forth across the room. The seat was a large cushion designed to resemble a swan. The swing was an outstanding example of opulence.
In the swing, across the room, was the nude form of a slight young woman. Crowley and the others froze. She had to be no more than nineteen years old. Her hair was blond and fell about her shoulders. She enjoyed herself and sent the swing higher in the air.
“Bill?” Crowley said to him. “We are supposed to bring you back to the mansion.” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Tesla look away in disgust.
“Oh, hello, gentlemen,” Hearst replied to them. “This is Marion.” He waved to the young woman on the swing. The young woman covered herself with a robe the minute she spotted the newcomers.
Hearst blinked his eyes and looked at the room about him. “How did I get here?” he asked.
Chapter 7
April 3, 1917.
“Honestly,” Hearst pleaded with them the next day. “I have no recollection what happened between the time I left the house and when you found me.”
After the three of them had located Hearst in his secret room, they’d given the young woman on the swing a sum of money to keep quiet and take a cab home. She didn’t even bother to ask who they were.
“I hope you weren’t taken advantage of,” Garvey had spoken to her.
“Of course not,” she told them. “Papa Bill is always the perfect gentleman.”
“You have no memory of meeting up with that woman at the Follies?” Garvey asked him. It was early in the morning and they all sat around a table drinking coffee.
After Hearst emerged from his daze the previous day, they were able to get him out of the private floor he maintained in the building and to the waiting car that circled it. On the way back to his mansion, they discovered he’d maintained the private room for years.
“All I remember is the piece of paper Aleister gave me,” Hearst spoke up. “Until you found me, I was in a trance of some kind.”
“What did you give him?” Garvey asked Crowley.
“Here it is,” Hearst spoke and pulled the paper out of his robe. He’d insisted the other three men stay over that night, much to the displeasure of his servants.
Hearst dropped the paper in the middle of the table. Garvey took it and unfolded the small slip.
It was blank.
“I was sure he’d written something on it,” Hearst spoke. “Don’t you recall giving me something, Aleister?”
“You asked for a piece of paper from the notepad on your desk,” Crowley lied. “I tore one off and gave it to you. That is all.” The last thing he wanted was for the other three to think he’d put a spell of some kind on Hearst.
“There is any number of things that could have caused your blackout,” Tesla spoke. “Have you been seeing a doctor about dizzy spells?”
“No,” Hearst responded. “I’m fit as a fiddle. Everyone in my family comes from good stock.” He didn’t see Garvey’s eyes roll.
The subject of the conversation turned back to Tesla and his claims that a large object was headed on a collision course with Earth. At first, they found it hard to believe, even with all that had taken place. It was a bright Tuesday morning and the war fever seemed to be the main thing on everyone’s minds. However, Hearst pointed out that it might be a good idea to let Tesla show him his proof. No one mentioned the strange woman named Babalon who appeared before they could rescue Tesla.
“I have another workshop,” Tesla explained to them, “that I use. It’s in an old factory near the East River. There seem to be a number of these old buildings I have been able to rent cheaply. No one asks questions and I’ve conducted plenty of experiments without the nosey reporters. Sorry, Bill, I understand you want to cover the news, but your journalists can be annoying.”
“It’s what I pay them to do,” Hearst laughed.
An hour later, they were in the Packard and on their way to Tesla’s active laboratory. They passed by several people on street corners who predicted the doom of America from the war. Crowley noted the crowds that listened to them were bigger than the one's last week. There was a sense of tension in the air caused by the vote congress was about to take whether or not to declare war on Germany.
They pulled up in front of the old factory after a brief drive. This time there was no need for guns, although Hearst insisted that the trunk be filled with them. Crowley suspected the driver was armed under his coat.
This factory was in much worse shape than the last place Tesla used. It consisted of an old red brick building with a sliding door across the front. Off to one side sat a small stable where mules were kept at one time to haul freight. The door was chained and sealed with a padlock. Crowley spotted no windows or doors on the building. How in the world was anyone supposed to see inside it?
The answer came a few minutes later when Tesla unlocked the door. He slid it to one side. While the driver waited in the car, they entered the building and looked around.
“Just a moment,” Tesla told them and disappeared into the darkness of the old factory. They heard him stumble around.
As the other three waited, Crowley looked up and saw the forms of sunlight windows at the top of the building. However, they were sealed over with a coating of some kind. Tesla didn’t want anyone looking inside to see what he was up to.
There was a whine from inside the dark
ness and they heard a machine cough into life. The next second the factory was bathed in light from lamps mounted in the ceiling and walls. The three men lowered their faces to avoid temporary blindness.
“My apologies,” Tesla told them as he walked up to the trio. “I needed to activate the generator. This building has its own power supply. The local power authority couldn’t provide me with what I needed, so I had to come up with my own solution.”
Before them was a vast workshop filled with instruments they didn’t understand. There were fabrication tools from all over the world. Off to one side was a complete machine shop, although none of the mills or lathes was powered by belts. The light bathed everything and left no shadows. The entire room before them was dominated by a table piled high with drawings and plans. To one side of it was a production office.
In the middle of the old factory floor, stood a large cylindrical object. It rose a good ten feet into the air, almost to the mezzanine that lined the rear of the factory. Crowley was puzzled over the purpose of the object until he realized what it was.
It was a rocket. He recognized it from the fins around the bottom. Tesla managed to assemble and build a rocket inside the building. Was this something he’d done for the federal government? It would explain why the Germans had him kidnapped.
“I am impressed,” Hearst told the inventor. “You’ve managed to accomplish a lot in all the years you’ve lived in New York. Why didn’t you try to get some publicity for what you did?”
“I don’t like publicity anymore,” Tesla told him as he shifted through the drawings on the table. “I did at one time, but it brings on too much trouble. People expect me to perform the miracles they want, not the ones I can accomplish.”
“You were supposed to prove to us that a large celestial object was on a collision course with Earth,” Garvey spoke up to him.
“Give me a few minutes to find the calculations I need.” He continued to sift through the papers.
Crowley looked at Garvey who shrugged his shoulders. Whatever it was, Tesla seemed to think that he had proof.
“Here it is!” Tesla exclaimed. “This proves beyond a reasonable doubt that the celestial abnormality is on a direct path to Earth.” He laid several papers out on the table and pointed at them.
Crowley and the others walked over to the table and looked at what he’d laid out for everyone to see. There were four large sheets of paper covered in complex mathematical formulas. Crowley recognized, at most, ten percent of what was in front of him. He could tell by the expressions on the faces of the men in front of him that they understood even less.
“This is all jolly good,” Crowley told the inventor, “but I don’t think any of us have the level of mathematical ability to follow your reasoning. Could you show us some better proof?”
Frustrated, Tesla went to a file drawer and withdrew several manila folders. He walked back to the desk and dropped them on his calculations. In one second, he’d opened the one he wanted and pulled out several photographs. He dropped three of them on the table in front of the men.
“Here’s your physical evidence,” Tesla said and pointed out objects in the photographs. “Each one of these was taken near lunar orbit. It may be hard to make out the celestial object because of the angle of the sun, but it is there.”
Crowley and the others looked at the photographic plates he’d laid out on the table. It was possible to see a large rock laid out on a field of stars in each one. In one of the photographs, they could see the moon in the background. In another, Crowley tried to recognize what the small orb in the foreground might resemble. It finally hit him that the orb was Earth.
“Assuming these photographs are real,” Hearst told Tesla. “What do they represent? All I see is a large rock of some kind in the sky. Why should I believe you?”
“I would not lie about such an important matter,” Tesla thundered.
“I didn’t accuse you of lying,” Hearst said to him. “However, there will be others out there who need convincing. Every few years someone else claims the world is about to end. There are plenty of newspapers that went bankrupt covering their call to alarm. They looked foolish later when nothing happened and the sun rose the day after Armageddon.”
“For instance,” Garvey spoke. “How did you take these photographs? Do you have a special telescope that no one knows about?”
“I do have a telescope,” Tesla spoke and waved his hand to a large refractive one that sat on a cart in the corner of the factory. “But I did not use it to make these photographs.”
“Then how did you make them?” Crowley asked. “Did you fly up into outer space and take them yourself?”
“No,” Tesla explained. “I used that.” He pointed to the rocket in the middle of the floor.
“It’s been into outer space?” Hearst asked the incredulity in his voice.
“Yes,” Hearst returned. “Several times.”
“I thought those things made a lot of noise and fire when they flew into the sky,” Crowley pointed out. “No one said a word to me since I’ve been here about a rocket launch.”
“It doesn’t work the normal way,” Tesla explained. “This rocket is not propelled by a chemical explosion. It works by sympathetic vibrations. I can control it from here and bring it back.”
“I’ve never heard of that term,” Crowley spoke up. “What are sympathetic vibrations?”
“It would take too long to explain,” Tesla informed him. “I learned about them from a man in Philadelphia soon after I completed my first work for Westinghouse.”
“I’d like to see that thing in use,” Hearst spoke as he stared at the tall cylinder in front of him. “How do you get it out of the building? I don’t see any openings on the roof.”
“Half of the roof slides back,” Tesla explained again. “I had it installed soon after I moved into this place.”
“And don’t worry,” he added. “You’ll get to see the rocket aloft soon enough. I’ve outfitted it with a bomb big enough to destroy the celestial object.”
“That thing carries a bomb?” Garvey asked. “Powerful enough to destroy that rock?”
“It’s the only way to stop it,” Tesla added.
“I want to believe you,” Crowley spoke. “And I don’t sense any trickery in your voice. Still, you have to admit that this is a lot for us to swallow. How long before this meteor strikes Earth?”
“I’m not sure,” Tesla answered. “From my calculations, it could be one month to one year. There is a lot I don’t know about the way it moves through space. The astrodynamics of it is hard to quantify. You should also know that this is an asteroid and not a meteor.”
“You mean it originated within this solar system?” Garvey asked. “I was under the impression it came from outside.”
“No,” Tesla corrected him. “It did not come from within the asteroid belt. It originated from beyond the outer planets. From my calculations, it has traveled through space a long time to arrive at its present location.”
“Might there be a way to deflect it?” Crowley asked. “It seems a big task to send a bomb up there to destroy it. Any possibilities your figures are off and it won’t hit Earth?”
“It must be broken up into many pieces,” Tesla told him. “Smaller sections will leave Earth orbit if the blast is strong enough. The ones that do enter our atmosphere won’t be powerful enough to do much damage. Most will burn up when they enter our atmosphere. As to your second question, my calculations are always up for your examination. But it's coming this close to our world; I don’t want to assume that it will pass us by. The reason it seems to be here is deliberate.”
“You mean someone sent this asteroid here to destroy Earth?” Hearst spoke up.
“It’s the only reason I can come up with,” Tesla answered. “Someone wants us gone.”
“That is diabolical,” Crowley spoke. “Who would wipe out the entire human race?”
“I don’t know,” Tesla answered again. “Nor do I c
are. It won’t make any difference if that thing strikes Earth.”
“And it’s big enough to destroy the planet?” Hearst wanted to know. He held out one of the photographs in front of him.
“Not destroy the world,” Tesla corrected himself. “But it can do enough damage to wipe out all life on Earth. Imagine, if you will, what a bomb stronger than all the explosives used in the current European War might do if it was detonated. The explosion would burn up all the oxygen on the planet and make life a thing of the past. That is what will happen if this asteroid, this celestial object, strikes the earth.
“We’re going to need help,” Garvey spoke up. “Is this rocket ready to leave on its own?”
“No,” Tesla spoke. “The bomb has yet to be placed into the top of it.”
“You’ve finished the bomb?” Hearst asked. “What kind is it?”
“I don’t have the time to go into the method I employed to build the bomb,” Tesla explained again. “It won’t work unless I order it to do so. The bomb is here in this building, but don’t worry about it, it's harmless until I install it in the rocket.”
“You’ll need better protection around this building,” Garvey spoke. “Allow me to go and find some supporters. I’ll bring them back here and that way you don’t have to worry about the Germans coming back for you again.”
“If you want,” Tesla spoke. “I do worry that a large group of men around the building will attract unwanted attention.”
“I’ll tell them to keep a low profile,” Garvey explained. “Many of these people want a large task to accomplish. This will satisfy them. Especially when it’s known they helped to save mankind.”
“Do you need to take my car?” Hearst asked Garvey. “I can have John drive you wherever you need to go.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Garvey spoke. “I know where we are. There are people I can go to a short walk away for help.” He shook hands with everyone, except Tesla, who backed away.
“I’m sorry,” Tesla apologized. “I don’t shake hands. It bothers me to have any more than casual contact with anyone.”
The Apocalypse Four: 93 Million Miles To Gotham Page 7
