Metamorphosis

by Sesh Heri

  “Come in, Mr. London,” Mr. Tesla said. “We are just finishing our adjustment of the engines and I was just about to answer Mr. Czito’s question.”

  “What was the question?” Jack asked.

  “It was about the outside world,” Mr. Czito said. “I was wondering: if the rest of the world is frozen in time, how can we still see it? Wouldn’t even the light rays emitting from the sun and other objects be frozen in space?”

  “That was the question,” Mr. Tesla said. “What do you think of it, Mr. London? How would you account for our ability to see a world frozen in time, right down to its very rays of light?”

  “Obviously we are not seeing anything with that frozen light,” Jack said.

  “Obviously,” Mr. Tesla said.

  “I’d think that we are seeing by some other means,” Jack said. “Perhaps what we’re seeing is not even the actual physical world as we know it.”

  “Very good, Mr. London,” Mr. Tesla said. “And if we are not seeing the actual physical world, what then are we seeing?”

  “Some kind of copy,” Jack said. “I’d call it something like an astral double.”

  “I’d call it the same thing,” Mr. Tesla said. “We are seeing an instant of time of the world on the astral plane, but because we exist physically, we are still moving through our own time— or were moving through our own time. Our time is now referenced to a sailor lying in the etheric scanning chamber and our ship is about to begin a phase shift backwards along our time-line.”

  “What will happen to the sailor?” Mr. Czito asked. “Will he disappear from the chamber?”

  “He will remain in the chamber in his own time,” Mr. Tesla said. “To us, the entire chamber will disappear shortly, but the end of the electrical cable leading to it will keep us linked to it trans-temporally. That is our life-line to 1915. Meanwhile, the Cypher will begin to move backwards in time. We must begin that backwards movement very soon or we will be lost in time. As you noted, we are seeing the outside world frozen in its own time in an unusual way. We are viewing its astral double. As we continue to lock on to this astral double, it will fade from our view, for we are continuing to move in time. Eventually the astral double of the universe would disappear and we would have no time or space reference. Therefore, we must affect a phase shift backwards in time. We have but one thing to do and that is to close the final circuit. Someone must throw that switch there upon the wall. Why don’t you do it, Lt. Nimitz?”

  Lt. Nimitz went over to the switch and looked at it, and then turned back to the others.

  “When I throw this switch,” Lt. Nimitz asked, “what will happen? Will we immediately start moving backward in time?”

  “Yes,” Mr. Tesla said.

  “How will we know we are going to the correct time?” Lt. Nimitz asked.

  “We are in the same space-time domain as the Martian airship,” Mr. Tesla said. “I believe that our backward motion in time will resonate with their backward motion which they have just engaged, and we will be pulled along with them as they shift in time.”

  “We will resonate to their energy system,” Mr. Czito said.

  “That is correct,” Mr. Tesla said.

  “All right,” Lt. Nimitz said, “here goes.”

  Lt. Nimitz threw the switch. A rainbow of lights flashed through the room, then everything and everyone in the room began flickering. Then the light effect stopped and everything returned to seeming normalcy.

  “What was that?” Lt. Nimitz asked.

  “We just back-tracked over our own time-line,” Mr. Tesla said. “We are now moving backward in time. We can determine just how rapidly we are moving backwards by the time gauge Mr. Czito has just rigged over there. What does it say, Mr. Czito?”

  “We have just passed the year 1492,” Mr. Czito said.

  “Ah,” Mr. Tesla said, “we pass Columbus and embark upon a voyage of our own.”

  The lock on the door to the room in which Charmian and I were imprisoned suddenly made a loud click and slid open. Several Martians came into the room, and the one with the key came forward and unlocked our handcuffs. Charmian brought her hands down and let out a sigh of relief. No sooner had we been released from the cuffs and each of us locked in another set of manacles that we were suddenly shoved through the door, out and down the corridor, and up a ladder to the deck above us, and then on up to the third, top deck of the ship.

  There, we were brought to another door and thrust through it.

  Now Charmian and I stood in what I took to be the ship’s main control room, the bridge. Unlike the Cypher there were no windows in this area. The Martians, being sensitive to direct sunlight, had no need of windows. The outside world was dimly viewed from a large oval projection screen at one end of the room. TAR-A-VAL sat in front of this screen in a throne-like armchair which could swivel about. This was where TAR-A-VAL sat as we entered the room.

  On the screen in front of us I saw a pattern of grids, such as I had viewed in my dreams and my astral projection. The grids were shifting to form a tube, and in a moment I could see that we were beginning to move down that tube.

  “We are now moving back into time,” TAR-A-GAL said. “I wanted both you and the woman to see this so that you will know my power.”

  One of the Martians at a control board said something and TAR-A-GAL made a sharp reply. The view on the screen shifted. For a moment I thought TAR-A-GAL had reversed the direction of the ship, since it now seemed that we were moving backwards through the tube. Then I spied something coming forward from the end of the tube of grids— it was the bow of the U.S.S. Cypher. TAR-A-GAL barked an order.

  The viewing screen was showing the receding walls of the tube from the stern of the Martian airship. We could see that the Cypher was approaching us in the tube.

  A ray of light shot back to the Cypher and struck its bow. The Cypher drifted back into the receding tube and out of sight.

  “Your people cannot pursue us!” TAR-A-GAL announced.

  “In a moment we will be lost to them.”

  The view on the screen shifted to the prow of the Martian airship again. The tube of grids was opening up; the end of the tube showed a blue sky. We passed out of the tube and into the blue.

  The view on the screen shifted again to show the land below us— a thick jungle, and in the distance, overhung by a swirling rainbow-hued mist, a massive volcano jutted upwards in a black profile.

  “We have reached our destination,” TAR-A-GAL said. “It is in the area of your planet known as the Solomon Islands, only now there are no islands below. It is all solid land mass.”

  TAR-A-GAL barked out something that seemed to be a question, for then he continued in English:

  “We have traveled backwards over 12,000 years, and somewhere down there, perhaps even upon the slopes of that volcano, the Bell has come to rest. We will go down, inspect it, and bring it back aboard.”

  TAR-A-GAL barked more orders. The viewing screen showed that we were descending toward the surface of the jungle’s treetops, approaching a curtain of rainbow-colored light that shifted back and forth around the distant volcano. Suddenly, we felt yet again another vibration pass through the floor and walls of the room. The viewing screen showed the surface of the jungle turn from the horizontal to the diagonal. The tops of trees flashed into view. TAR-A-GAL shouted loudly. We were about to crash.

  And then we did crash. It was very strange. We saw the surface of the jungle flash over the screen, blacking it out and at the same time felt a shudder in the room where we were standing. Then we all felt light on our feet, and then a sudden, brutal heaviness overcame us all and drove us to the floor. The artificial gravity field of the ship had cease to function, and some kind of delayed inertia now gripped us all and pulled us down.

  Several seconds passed of complete silence, then some us began crawling to our feet. Mutters and mumblings in the Martian tongue passed through the room and then TAR-A-GAL’s deep voice sounded. The Martians all snapped to their
feet and Charmian and I stood up.

  TAR-A-GAL went to several of the men stationed at the control boards and carried on a heated discussion with them. Finally he turned to Charmian and me.

  “There is no time to waste!” TAR-A-GAL snapped. “The Bell must be located immediately. The ship has been disabled. We cannot wait for repairs. Therefore, I will take an exploration party across land on foot, locate the Bell, and bring it back to the ship with anti-gravity grips. You and the woman will accompany us, for when we locate the Bell you will remove the device you attached to it.”

  “And what if I refuse?” I asked. “What are you going to do to me? Kill me?”

  “Oh, no,” TAR-A-GAL said, smiling. “I won’t kill you. I’ll kill the woman. I’ll immediately kill the woman. I’d be delighted to do so.”

  TAR-A-GAL laughed insanely.

  “I don’t get the joke, TAR,” I said. “But I get the message. Let’s go.”

  “I’ll say when we go,” TAR-A-GAL said.

  “So when?” I asked.

  “When?” TAR-A-GAL asked. He stepped up to me and screamed:

  “Now!”

  And then he shoved me to the door.

  On the U.S.S. Cypher the energy ray from the Martian airship had only slowed their pursuit. Mr. Tesla, Lt. Nimitz, Kolman Czito, and Jack stood in the pilot’s cabin and watched as the ship’s pilot steered them through the tunnel of grids. In a moment, they saw the blue sky at the end of the tunnel.

  “We’re coming out, Captain,” the pilot said to Mr. Tesla.

  “Take us on through,” Mr. Tesla said. “We have reached the time node. What does the year count say, Mr. Czito?”

  “It is 10,700 B.C. by the Gregorian Calendar,” Mr. Czito announced.

  “And our position on the earth?” Lt. Nimitz asked.

  Mr. Czito went to the plotting table and looked at the magnetic charts of the earth and then went over to a viewing screen and compared them to the magnetic readings of the earth directly below the ship.

  “Unless the earth’s magnetic field has changed appreciably in the thousands of years, then I’d say we are the in the vicinity of the Solomon Islands— specifically on or near the island of Guadalcanal.”

  The Cypher came upon the same veil of rainbow-colored mist that the Martian airship had encountered; however, Mr. Tesla was more alert than the Martians had been.

  “That mist,” Mr. Tesla said. “I don’t like the look of it. Stop the ship here.”

  The pilot brought the Cypher to an abrupt halt in the sky.

  “Mr. Czito,” Mr. Tesla said. “Take an etheric density reading of that thin cloud layer ahead of us.”

  Mr. Czito went back into the bridge and consulted some gauges. In a moment he returned to the pilot’s cabin.

  “There’s an etheric rotation out there,” Mr. Czito said. “It is a gigantic phenomenon, miles in extent and centered upon that volcano in the distance, I would estimate.”

  “An etheric rotation,” Lt. Nimitz said. “That means the actual space out there is rotating.”

  “That’s correct, Lieutenant,” Mr. Tesla said. “If we flew through that rotating column of space, we would probably lose all power and crash.”

  “How can we get through it?” Lt. Nimitz asked.

  “Oh,” Mr. Tesla said. “We can get through it, I believe. I am not concerned about that. All we must do is fire as electric ray at the wall of rotating ether until our energy system begins to resonate with the wall. We will then be drawn around and into the wall, spun around it and then through it.”

  “It sounds like your saying we are going to become a bit of flotsam drawn into a whirlpool of water,” Lt. Nimitz said.

  “Very good, Lieutenant,” Mr. Tesla said. “That’s exactly what we’re going to become, a bit of flotsam, a bit of flotsam which will smoothly flow through that vortex of energy and land gently within its interior— that is— we will do that with the help of our expert pilot here.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” the pilot said.

  “I see,” Lt. Nimitz said. “But you said, ‘I’m not concerned about that.’ I take that to mean that you are concerned about something else.”

  “That etheric compression out there,” Mr. Tesla said. “Obviously it is being generated by the Bell. It is the device’s signature effect. But note that before in our own time the Bell’s field of influence was only a few hundred feet in diameter. Now it is miles in extent— how many miles, Mr. Czito?”

  “It is approximately a forty mile-wide vortex of etheric compression,” Mr. Czito said.

  “And at its center?” Mr. Tesla asked.

  “The vortex has a four mile-wide eye,” Mr. Czito said. “In that area space and time are normal. Outside that eye distortions begin to occur until at the distance of twenty miles the space in the vortex is so compressed that it is impassable.”

  “We must electrically drill a hole in the very surface of the vortex,” Mr. Tesla said. “Then we must continue applying power to its surface as it begins to draw us in and pull us around in a circle. You see, Lieutenant, I am concerned that the Bell has somehow been re-engineered since we were last in contact with it. We do not know how long it has been in this time-line or who has had access to it. While in our own time-line it has only been minutes since we departed the year 1915, the Bell, having arrived in this time earlier than us, may have been here much longer. It may have been here a century— or it may have arrived ten thousand years ago from this present time of 10,700 B.C. We have no way of knowing how long it has been here until we can get closer to it.”

  “And so we fire an electric ray directly at that rainbow out there,” Lt. Nimitz said.

  “That’s right, Lieutenant,” Mr. Tesla said. “You give the order.”

  “Now?” Lt. Nimitz asked.

  “Right now,” Mr. Tesla said.

  Lt. Nimitz stepped back into the bridge and said to a sailor sitting at a control panel, “You heard the Captain. Fire!”

  The sailor closed a switch on the panel and a ray of light shot out from the bow of the Cypher. A wall of light erupted in the sky, a shimmering curtain that iridesced and twinkled and flashed and blazed.

  “That’s it,” Mr. Tesla said. “Keep firing the ray, keep firing.”

  Probably at the same time that Mr. Tesla was trying to fire his way through the etheric vortex in the sky overhead, we were marching along a trail cut through the thickest jungle I had ever seen in my life. The sky above us was ablaze with rainbow-colored clouds and flashes of lightning, and the air through which we moved was wet and heavy; it did not pass over one’s skin, but clung and wrapped and crawled over face and hands.

  I had no idea how the Martians felt, but it seemed to me if they were anything like earthmen, they would be suffocating by now. In addition to their uniforms, they all wore caps of the French Foreign Legion type with a cloth curtain hanging all around the sides of their heads. They also wore eye coverings— goggles made with a dark, almost black glass. Charmian still wore her riding suit and boots and I still wore my winter coat. Now the heat was becoming suffocating to me.

  “Say, TAR,” I said. “How about letting me take off my coat? Just take these bracelets off for one second.”

  “Shut up,” TAR-A-GAL said evenly on the trail ahead. I thought his reply was unusually even-tempered and well mannered. But then I thought again, and I realized that he was afraid of something, and it occurred to me that what he feared was not an attack from possible jungle natives, but the unknown itself. He was away from his ship and most of his men, the source of his power. Now only TAR-A-GAL and a small scouting party of eight Martian crewmen held us captive. Two of the Martians carried fairly large devices that must have been the anti-gravity grips to which TAR-A-GAL had referred. The Martian’s ship had been completely disabled, but had landed intact. Without a broadcasting system for their electrical energy, we were all reduced to walking as our only form of transportation— although later I would see how the Martians would make use of those a
nti-gravity grips to fashion for themselves a make-shift flying craft.

  Our trail took a curve through the thick growth, and when we rounded that curve we came upon a man sitting cross-legged on the ground at the edge of the jungle. He wore no clothes except for a long strip of white cloth wound about his waist and loins. He either had no hair on his body or it had all been shaved clean. I saw that he was of some oriental race; his eyes were mere slits and he had no eyebrows. As our group approached, he held a wooden bowl aloft in his hands and made a pitiful sound, babbling some unknown language.

  “Beggar!” TAR-A-GAL said. “They sound the same in every language!”

  TAR-A-GAL shouted something in Martian and kicked at the little oriental man who scampered to his feet and ran away into the jungle. I heard a flurry of bird calls deeper in the jungle and knew that the little man had fled in that direction, which was away from the giant volcano we were approaching.

  On we all trudged through the jungle, TAR-A-GAL in the lead, another Martian behind him, then me, then Charmian, and then seven more Martians to our rear. We reached a point in the trail where it began an ascent toward the shoulder of the volcano, and below us, through a break in the trees we glimpsed a large lake spread out at the foot of the volcano. Purple and green clouds were mirrored in the lake. Far in the distance I could glimpse great white columns of water flowing down off of black cliffs and pouring into that mirrored surface below.

  Soon, the roar of water came to my ears, and when I judged the sound was loud enough to mask quiet speech, I turned and looked back at Charmian. She was swatting insects away from her flushed face. I turned back around. After a few more steps, I turned toward Charmian again. She looked up at me. Again, I turned back around.

  I had done this turning back and forth to look at Charmian to establish a pattern in the minds of the Martians walking behind us. It was a magician’s trick, establishing a pattern. The mind tunes out the familiar. Any stimuli to the senses which is continually applied becomes unnoticed, and, eventually, invisible. I was establishing a pattern of turning about backwards and forwards until the Martians behind me would not even notice my movement. We kept walking on down the trail, and ever so often I would turn around. Not too often, for this, of itself, would attract attention. What I wanted was not attention, but invisibility.