The Earth-Tube (31 page)

In a moment it had fallen again. Tidal waves of irresistible force, ocean-born, sped toward the land. A wall of water miles high rolled in upon South America. The screaming Asians on the shore were swept away, and their machines, and the cities they had built. Inward rushed the waters across the Argentinian plains, and northward toward Brazil, until the land was flooded far in from the shore.

And still the waters were not content. Great earthquakes shook the world, and wave after wave swept in upon the land, while high above, striving vainly in all this disturbance to strike out northward for safety, the American fleet, its work done and more than done, struggled with the turbulent air.

“Look. look,” shouted King, clutching Diane and holding her where she could see through the steaming window of the plane. “There’s the sea, sweeping out the last traces of the Asians! If there is any of America left when this cataclysm has subsided, it will be a new and changed land, and it will be free!”

In Asia a similar phenomenon had taken place. Tan-lis, the mighty, was no more. The tall and graceful towers of San Adel toppled silently into the hungry sea, and sullen gray water washed the gardens where the gay birds had sung. Japan was like a floating island, trembling in the ocean, and in another moment it had disappeared utterly. Volcanic rumblings came from underneath the waves. The waters boiled over the hidden fires of the writhing earth.

The waves swept in upon China. Earthquakes in India overthrew age-old temples of the gods, and tidal waves came rolling in upon her shores. The Malay Archipelago arose in stone and coral from the sea; the islands joined hands of earth to make a small and newborn continent, then settled down again. The whole world rumbled and shook, as millions of tons of earth and stone, displaced by the shifting of the earth-tube and the sea, left age-old beds to seek more comfort in the new.

Nor did the Western Hemisphere escape unchanged. When, weeks later, the tidal waves had receded from the land, and harried men had sent out expeditions to learn what miracles had happened in those fevered hours when the earth shook like a shaggy dog, they learned that South America had narrowed toward the south; that Cuba, Haiti and Porto Rico had been raised and joined; that New York and many another eastern coast city had been all but drowned beneath disastrous waves, but had survived.

Four days after they had set out to strike the Asians at the Isthmus, about half of the American fleet returned to Washington. The others, unable to weather the tempests which had joined their fury with that of the waters and the earth, had fallen by the way and disappeared.

V

It was on the evening of that most triumphant Fourth of July, a few days after the close of the war, when the Secretary of War of the Pan-Americas arose amid the thunderous applause of his admirers and delivered the brief address which will probably immortalize him for all time as one of the great speakers of history.

“What did the war cost us?” asked the Secretary oratorically of the microphones. “That we can never say. Thousands of lives, years of time, endless sums in money and horror and suffering. But it has brought us many blessings, too. From it we have learned that life is more than greed; that friendship and mutual trust are greater than factories and abundant commerce with foreign nations. Like the Phoenix from the ashes, America has risen from the ruins of the war . a new and mighty America, both in the north and the south. a union of free peoples, under a government equaled nowhere, and under a new economic system which guarantees that never again shall any man be made a slave by any other man. And these are blessings, gentlemen!”

When he had concluded, the assembled members of the Angell Society, which had been formed only the week before in his honor, arose and toasted in real wine the Secretary and his bride, the former Anna Scott.
²⁹
King and Diane and Dr. Scott and the President, sitting together at the official table, applauded vigorously the honors paid to so great and honest a man.

The End.

NOTES

¹
Weiss and Samarkand dropped a specially prepared electro-thermal unit 8,443 feet into a natural fissure in the lower Andes. Walpurgis buried a triple-wound coil and antenna near Miami and tuned it to the earth’s vibrations according to an adaptation of the Glittner scale. Neither experiment was successful.

²
See Fischer’s
The Earth Colloids,
and others.

³
Dr. Scott was among the earliest to discover the effect of earth-vibrations upon conductivity in various metals. The electro-metallic seismographic unit, which records with accuracy not only the lateral and vertical motions of the earth’s crust, but the twisting and spiral strains as well, was the direct outgrowth of his discovery. The small units upon his earth model were probably of this type, particularly adapted to the work at hand.

⁴
This estimate was a little large, as it later appeared. The actual angle was about thirty-six degrees.

⁵
Such a car would, of necessity, touch upon one side or the other of the earth-tube throughout its journey, with the exception of a brief interval at the center. This is due to the rotation of the earth.

⁶
A distance of about 75 miles north and a little west. The ocean depth here is 1,000 feet and less.

⁷
Some exaggeration may be forgiven in so excited an observer.

⁸
The memorable night of February 16.

⁹
Correspondents at the time persisted in calling this metal
steel
for want of a better term though it was well known that the Asian tanks were constructed of some other substance.

¹⁰
The Asians, moving rapidly, went northwestward along the shore by Gualeguay, capturing many villages along the way and enslaving the inhabitants, who were sent back to the enemy fortifications at Montevideo. The tanks then crossed the Uraguay and Parana rivers, turned toward the head of the bay, and proceeded southeastward upon Buenos Aires, crumpling hamlets and villages in their path and taking additional thousands of prisoners. They lighted their way with tremendous fan-beam lights and made a uniform speed of about twenty-five miles an hour. It is to be noted that these events were taking place on the night of February 16, at the very time when the Secretary was boasting of the success of his defenses at Buenos Aires.

¹¹
Only eighteen of them. The others had apparently returned to Montevideo with prisoners.

¹²
The same correspondent later sent word of the fall of La Plata, to which the Asians proceeded immediately after the destruction of Buenos Aires. The number of poor wretches who lost their lives in these forays was never learned, but it is certain that thousands died, while hundreds of thousands, overcome by the Asian vapor which they wrongly thought was steam, were taken captive.

¹³
To their number had also been added many large communication tanks, whose function it appeared to be to convey supplies and prisoners from the Asian strongholds to the various fronts and back. In addition, there had appeared swarms of smaller, very rapid machines, which tended and aided the more cumbersome but more effective fighting tanks. The small machines were able to surmount difficult obstacles, climbing and descending with ease, and were valuable particularly in the mountainous sections. They were useful also in surrounding towns or encampments and frequently served as scouts for the larger machines, moving on ahead and selecting a proper pathway for the advance.

¹⁴
He was referring, of course, to the President, Dr. Scott, King Henderson, Dr. Angell, and Seiior Ramon Garcia, who, it had been publicly announced, would be appointed to the council in the event of a favorable vote by the Congress.

¹⁵
The intensity of this ray appeared to be controlled by the operators, and though its range was necessarily short, its effectiveness was not to be doubted. The experience was first that of shock, then of numbness, followed by brief madness, loss of muscular control, hysteria, and finally temporary paralysis and complete coma. Victims were apparently gathered up later, taken to the Asian strongholds, and revived to find themselves slaves. It is to the very few who escaped this fate that we owe our knowledge of the ray’s effects.

¹⁶
Later experience showed that this weapon consisted of a simple, powerful vibration, produced through a wide range in the heavier tanks, from a period lower than the lowest appreciable sound to one almost beyond the range of the human ear. The lower vibrations were most frequently used, and they were of such intensity that the effect was that of a series of heavy explosions. To soldiers, the sensation was that of being under terrible shell-fire. With ears and every quivering muscle protesting, hysteria was manifest, and whole armies smitten by the holocaust of vibration sometimes threw down their arms and protection and ran foolishly, often toward the approaching monsters which were responsible. Sympathetic vibrations set up in bridges and buildings caused them to topple. The march of the vibrating tanks through a city was too horrible to describe, as with their rays and vapor jets, they swept the crashing ruins for victims of their lust for slaves.

¹⁷
As long ago as 1929 the usefulness of these devices was demonstrated by no less an authority than Dr. H. H. Sheldon, at the Engineering Societies Building, in New York City.

¹⁸
A barbaric and unsanitary custom which had survived from earlier times. It was once popular also in New York.

¹⁹
They were made, apparently, upon the principle of the Dewar bulb, a device which had been long used in storing and handling such liquids.

²⁰
“A curious feature of this process is that it appears to spread without stimulation to parts of the structure not directly affected by the liquid. Thus the application of liquid air (boiling point. 190 C.) at one part of a solid undulal structure will produce the dissolution of a large portion, if not all, of the metallic substance. This appears to indicate a highly complex molecular or electronic internal balance, which once disturbed tends to spread through the structure.” Henderson,
Official Technical Report on the Asian Discoveries,
Vol. I, p. 381.

²¹
This incredible and well-nigh fatal lapse is fully reported in Diane’s
Memoirs,
published for private circulation many years later.

²²
“In general shape, the earth-car is like a double-ended, steel-jacketed bullet, a cylindrical body finished at each end with a conical cap which runs out nearly to a point. Each cap is about 250 feet in length, and the body about 1,500 feet, making a total of approximately 2,000 feet. The sides, made of smooth undulal, are equipped with eight parallel lengthwise contact ridges, each fitted with efficient rolling apparatus to reduce the friction against the sides of the tube. At either end, attached firmly to the caps, but movable from within, are four vanes to aid in guiding the projectile. These, because of their shape, tend also to impart a gently spiral motion to the car, in order that the contact ridges may play one after another on the earth-tube wall. The spiral motion is extremely slow, contriving about one complete turn in 1,000 miles of travel, thus working no hardship on passengers inside.” Henderson,
Official Technical Report,
Vol. I. Readers interested in greater technical detail are referred to this report.

²³
“The car is made of a double shell of undulal; the inner wall insulated from the outer by special packing, a vacuum space, heat reflecting coatings, and the capillary network of a giant chemically-operated cooling system. The necessary apparatus for guiding, powering, and cooling the projectile is contained in either cone-cap, where are also quarters for the use of the crew during flight.” Henderson,
Official Technical Report,
Vol. I.

²⁴
Nevertheless, the Americans were never able to reproduce it.

²⁵
It is to be noted that this was not pure inspiration on King’s part. Such a telescope had been experimented with in Dr. Scott’s laboratory, but nothing had come of it.

²⁶
Gas was first used by the Asians in driving the defenders away at the Isthmus; it was the first of the Asian weapons to be used for the primary purpose of producing death. It was delivered in shells from the third gun upon the Asian turrets, which burst upon contact, throwing the heavy poison about. The gas slowly spread, producing a certain and fearful death, with agony at the last moments too horrible to see. This substance was again used with telling effect at the capture of Mexico City.

²⁷
The hangar was fortunately nearby, atop the State Building.

²⁸
They were of strong glass and soft metal, made upon a principle adapted from the Dewar bulb, long known as an efficient container for storing or transporting this unusual liquid.

²⁹
They had been married that same afternoon.

The Conquest of Space Book Series

Ron Miller

About twenty years ago I came up with a bright idea for a book. It was going to be a visual chronology of every spaceship ever conceived, starting in the third century BC. This eventually wound up being a monster called
The Dream Machines
(Krieger: 1993), with 250,000 words and more than 3000 illustrations. In the course of researching this thing, I found myself more and more having to locate copies of scarce books and novels. Some of these I could find in libraries or private collections, but others were available only through antiquarian booksellers (if I could find them at all). All too often, this would mean an investment of many hundreds of dollars—money I simply couldn’t afford to invest in the project. This was frustrating, since I didn’t really need to
own
the book, I just needed the information it contained...and I couldn’t see spending, say, $500 for the privilege of looking at a single paragraph.

I knew that other researchers have had the same problem. There were ordinary readers, too, who were looking for good reading copies of obscure books but, like me, were unwilling or unable to pay hundreds of dollars solely for the chance to read a book.