The Earth-Tube (5 page)

Dr. Scott came to the telephone in his bedroom slippers and nightgown, a ridiculous figure to be talking to the Secretary of War. He was, as King had expected, irritable.

“Well?” he demanded into the telephone.

There was a long pause while the Secretary explained why he had called the scientist out of bed and what the trouble was. “I thought it important enough to disturb your sleep about,” he explained.

“It’s no more important to-night than it was ten days ago,” the scientist replied. “You didn’t seem to think it was worth any attention at all then, you know.”

The Secretary apologized profusely. He was not sure, of course, that it was anything of particularly dire import even now, he said, but certain manifestations, described in official messages from Montevideo, had checked oddly with Dr. Scott’s predictions, and the coincidence (if indeed it was a coincidence) had seemed surprising and even alarming. He wanted to know, he said, whether Dr. Scott considered the reports of the captain of the
San Barleyduc to
confirm his predictions.

Dr. Scott replied without hesitation.

“I most certainly do,” he said.

“Then what,” asked the Secretary, “would you suggest as an easy way to rid our hemisphere of these invaders?”

Dr. Scott laughed. “The Japanese and Chinese thought bombardment with heavy explosives would be an easy’ way,” he said. “The fact is, I haven’t the slightest idea how you are going to keep these fellows from conquering the whole Western Hemisphere.”

Clapping his hand on the mouthpiece, Dr. Scott turned to King.

“He wants to know what to do,” explained the scientist.

“Fine,” replied King. “You know what we decided upon this afternoon. And be sure that he understands the need of immediate action.”

Dr. Scott turned back to the telephone.

“There are lots of things we might try,” he told the Secretary, “but if you want my candid opinion, it looks pretty serious. The important thing is to realize at once the magnitude of the problem and to size up the strength of their present protection, which I understand from news reports is already quite sufficient to guard the mouth of the earth-tunnel. How about an air expedition to make a thorough survey of the works?”

“I think it would be wise,” returned the Secretary rather humbly, and after some thought.

“The sooner the better,” the professor replied. “Why don’t you start it now?”

There was a momentary buzzing on the line. The connection was broken. Some sleepy operator, not realizing the importance of the conversation she had interrupted, had pulled a plug somewhere and cut the Secretary off. In a few minutes the bell rang in the laboratory again. The voice of Dr. Angell came through clearly, still shouting at the operators along the line for quicker service.

“The expedition will be ready to start in about an hour,” he announced. “Four planes will go down, equipped with radios and X-ray cameras and with powerful lights. And of course, I will expect you and Mr. Henderson to go along.”

“Of course,” replied Dr. Scott. “We would have demanded this opportunity. We will be ready when you come for us.”

“Excellent,” said the Secretary. “That will be excellent!”

“By the way,” Dr. Scott asked, “why did you delay so long before calling me up? Your delay of ten days I can understand since you did not believe the evidence I gave you. But reports of this
San Barleyduc
affair were in the early afternoon newspapers. Yet it is after one o’clock at night before you call me up.”

“Well,” replied the voice of the Secretary, hesitantly, “I was called this afternoon by the Pan-Hemispheres Society to unveil a new monument to peace between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres.” He paused, rather embarrassed, then went on. “The ladies of the society had arranged a dinner after the ceremonies, and I. was not informed of the developments in South America until I returned to my office.”

“Pan-Hemispheric peace, eh?”

“Yes.”

Dr. Scott laughed as he hung up the receiver. “Angell will now proceed to learn something about Pan-Hemispheric war,” he said.

CHAPTER II

THE METAL MONSTERS

I

THE five planes rose over the sleeping city and swung south-eastward, flying in echelon. In the first ship rode Dr. Scott, Secretary Angell and his aides, King, and several Government technical experts on munitions and military engineering who had been hustled out of their beds by the Secretary and who were still sleepy and glum, hardly understanding the nature of the excursion upon which they had embarked.

“Better send these young men to bed,” said the professor, motioning toward the cabins in the fuselage. “We’ve got about twenty hours’ flying ahead of us, and I’ll have plenty of time to-morrow to explain this matter to them. In the meantime they’ll need their sleep.”

The Secretary assented. The experts, with glances of appreciation in the scientist’s direction, filed away, leaving Dr. Scott and King alone in the main cabin with their superior.

“I assume,” began the scientist abruptly, “that this metal used by the Asians is almost infinitely strong and infinitely heat-resisting, so far as we are concerned. I think that we will not be able to do anything against them in that direction, unless we find some chemical or atomic means of disintegrating it.”

The Secretary smiled.

“I am beginning to believe,” he said, “that you are a great scientist. I will be certain of it if our observations show that we really have in this hemisphere the cap of an earth-tube such as you have described. But I am sure, nevertheless, that you greatly overestimate the impregnability of this material. Remember that we have new heat rays and tremendously powerful explosives which have all been discovered and put into use since the unsuccessful Sino-Japanese war against the Asians.”

“Nonsense,” retorted Dr. Scott. “Your heat ray would be like a mosquito bite against such metal. We’ have calculated, from known data, that the heat at the center of the earth is at least several times greater than any temperature ever achieved on the surface. Enough heat escapes every year through the insulation of ten miles or so of rock, earth and water in its shell to melt the equivalent of eight hundred cubic miles of ice.

“And as for your explosives: the calculated pressure at the center of the earth is about forty-four million pounds per square inch. This tremendous pressure and that great heat are at once directed against the slender tube of metal which now reaches from Japan to South America, and yet it is resistant enough to withstand both influences. Where does your puny ray and your infinitesimal explosive stand in relation to those forces?”

“There is always the possibility,” replied the Secretary with irritating sweetness, “that your calculations might be wrong.”

Dr. Scott pounded his fist upon the table. “They have never been wrong yet!” he exclaimed. The planes flew evenly and with great speed, though there was very little sound in the cabins. Only the distant humming, like the drone of bees in clover, indicated that the eight great motors were tearing at the air ahead. The planes took the direct path for Montevideo, steering by instrument. They passed west of Bermuda, and by daybreak were well over the water between Bermuda and Porto Rico. At mid-afternoon the coast of Venezuela came into view. Darkness found them beginning to cross the broad, tangled jungles of the Amazon valley, flying high and well, still in formation.

During the day Dr. Scott and King, with the aid of charts and small models, had explained to the technical experts the true import of the trip and what they might expect to see at its end. They were visibly excited and asked many questions which Dr. Scott answered without hesitation, dealing minutely and completely with both facts and calculations. He drew many analogies for them, and described his working model of the earth to illustrate his theories.

“You will be able to see the western end of the earth-tube to-morrow, I hope,” the scientist told them. “We must make our observations carefully and thoroughly. On what we see to-morrow and how we see it may depend the fate of half the world.”

There was little sleeping that night aboard the leading plane, though every man went to bed early in order to be bright and fresh in the morning. A lookout was posted in the pilot’s cabin to report when Montevideo had been sighted. All were to be aroused in time to be dressed and ready for the inspection of the uncharted island they expected to find after a short flight out in the ocean from that city.

As nervous as any was King Henderson, who walked the floor of his cabin until late in the night, unable to settle down to sleep.

Now was Dr. Scott, and incidentally himself, to be proved infinitely wise or very foolish. The future of two men and a woman, at least, hung on the morning’s discoveries, whether the safety of the world was at stake or not.

Shortly after midnight King walked across the hall and carefully opened the scientist’s door. Dr. Scott was fast asleep and not in the least concerned.

II

The call from the lookout came before dawn. Far ahead, through the rainy air, he had caught a glimpse of the huge aerial beacons which marked the landing field at Montevideo. The technicians and scientists were up and dressed before they swept over the town.

“There is no need to land,” said Secretary Angell. “We have all the news by radio.”

The news, so far as it related to the project which by now was of absorbing interest to those aboard the plane, was of little importance. A party of airplanes had gone out from Montevideo the day before and had sailed over the “island” for several hours, but had learned little that was not already known. A long causeway of new earth and stone was already reaching out from the island toward the mainland, and was being added to rapidly. The remainder of the island appeared to have ceased to grow.

What had puzzled the observers was the nature of the “volcanic manifestations” they had viewed. Unlike an ordinary volcano, they reported, this cone appeared to have a thick shield over its top, which was not smoke, but some hard substance. There was a hole exactly in the center, it appeared, and from it there rushed a tremendous volume of air which carried neither smoke nor cinders, but which was so strong that one unwary plane, crossing it, had been carried upward at a tremendous rate for some distance and then torn to pieces by the force of the blast.

“What,” asked the Secretary, “do you gather from that report?”

“Simply that the car was coming through the earth from the Japanese side, forcing ahead of it the column of air which had filled the tube,” the scientist replied. “If the unlucky airplane had chanced to cross the spot when the car was returning to its home on the other side of the world, it would have discovered a similar blast of air, but this time directed downward toward the earth, and the plane, instead of being blown upward, would have been drawn into the tunnel and carried downward until exploded by the heat.”

He made a quick calculation. “If I am right about the frequency and speed of these trips through the earth,” he continued, “we may be there in time to see a car arrive. If not, we will probably witness the phenomena accompanying its return to Japan. Either will be worth seeing. I’m sure of that.”

A small convoy of navy planes had been waiting for them at Montevideo. When the official caravan passed overhead the smaller planes swept up to join them and flew on all sides in the old-fashioned war formation, as if to protect the group from some imaginary enemy in the skies ahead. The sun was beginning to come up as they flew out across the sea, still steering by compass for the supposed location of the island. The dawn was cloudy; the presence of the rising sun was evidenced only by a blood-red splotch on the eastern horizon, well to the north.

The sea was covered by a low cloud of vapor, which rose at times in plumes and whirls as the wind whipped it. Several times some one set up a cry that the island had been sighted, but each time closer observation proved that the alarm had been raised falsely. The wind produced many curious figures in the cloudy surfaces below.

“I am surprised that there is so much moisture in the air here,” said Dr. Scott. “This dampness and vapor is not common here at this season, is it?”

The Secretary shook his head.

“The population has been complaining of unusual rainfall and cloudiness for several weeks,” he said quietly. “I can’t see, though, how it could possibly have any connection with the object of our visit, can you?”

“Perhaps,” said the professor, cautiously. “We may see more about that when we get there.”

A signal came down from the bridge. An observer there had sighted what was unmistakably the island this time. The technicians rushed to the windows of the main cabin to look out. Professor Scott and the Secretary mounted to the bridge, where powerful glasses had been installed to give a better view.

At first there was nothing to be seen but a huge mound of gleaming metal, bright and new in appearance despite the rain and vapor which wreathed about it. In the center of this massive dome there was a dark spot, evidently the opening observers had noticed the day before. It was more than five hundred feet across, and perfectly round. The whole structure must have been nearly three miles in diameter, cast all in one piece, without visible seams or rivet-heads.

Below and at the edges of the shield they could see, when the vapors passed momentarily aside in the little wind, the new earth of the island which had risen so mysteriously from the sea. It was already more than four miles across at its shortest dimension. The beginning of the causeway to the continent, now a stumpy ribbon of land stretching north and a little west, was plainly visible, and toward this lengthening pathway the horn at the edge of the shield, noticed by the captain of the
San Barleyduc
before his misfortune, was directed. As the fleet passed over it an explosion of great violence occurred, accompanied by puffs of steam which eddied up on every side.

The planes were unaffected by the blast, which was clearly not aimed at them. Almost simultaneously there was a terrific splash at the end of the causeway. New earth seemed miraculously to have grown there. Dr. Scott, who had been peering intently at the prong, where the major part of the explosion had occurred, cried out in excitement.