Edison's Conquest of Mars Read online

  CHAPTER TWO

  _THE DISINTEGRATOR_

  This enthusiasm would have had but little justification had Mr. Edisondone nothing more than invent a machine which could navigate theatmosphere and the regions of interplanetary space.

  He had, however, and this fact was generally known, although the detailshad not yet leaked out--invented also machines of war intended to meetthe utmost that the Martians could do for either offence or defence inthe struggle which was now about to ensue.

  Acting upon the hint which had been conveyed from various investigationsin the domain of physics, and concentrating upon the problem all thoseunmatched powers of intellect which distinguished him, the greatinventor had succeeded in producing a little implement which one couldcarry in his hand, but which was more powerful than any battleship thatever floated. The details of its mechanism could not be easilyexplained, without the use of tedious technicalities and the employmentof terms, diagrams and mathematical statements, all of which would lieoutside the scope of this narrative. But the principle of the thing wassimple enough. It was upon the great scientific doctrine, which we havesince seen so completely and brilliantly developed, of the law ofharmonic vibrations, extending from atoms and molecules at one end ofthe series up to the worlds and suns at the other end, that Mr. Edisonbased his invention.

  Every kind of substance has its own vibratory rhythm. That of irondiffers from that of pine wood. The atoms of gold do not vibrate in thesame time or through the same range as those of lead, and so on for allknown substances, and all the chemical elements. So, on a larger scale,every massive body has its period of vibration. A great suspensionbridge vibrates, under the impulse of forces that are applied to it, inlong periods. No company of soldiers ever crosses such a bridge withoutbreaking step. If they tramped together, and were followed by othercompanies keeping the same time with their feet, after a while thevibrations of the bridge would become so great and destructive that itwould fall in pieces. So any structure, if its vibration rate is known,could easily be destroyed by a force applied to it in such a way that itshould simply increase the swing of those vibrations up to the point ofdestruction.

  Now Mr. Edison had been able to ascertain the vibratory swing of manywell known substances, and to produce, by means of the instrument whichhe had contrived, pulsations in the ether which were completely underhis control, and which could be made long or short, quick or slow, athis will. He could run through the whole gamut from the slow vibrationsof sound in air up to the four hundred and twenty-five millions ofmillions of vibrations per second of the ultra red rays.

  Having obtained an instrument of such power, it only remained toconcentrate its energy upon a given object in order that the atomscomposing that object should be set into violent undulation, sufficientto burst it asunder and to scatter its molecules broadcast. This theinventor effected by the simplest means in the world--simply a parabolicreflector by which the destructive waves could be sent like a beam oflight, but invisible, in any direction and focused upon any desiredpoint.

  I had the good fortune to be present when this powerful engine ofdestruction was submitted to its first test. We had gone upon the roofof Mr. Edison's laboratory and the inventor held the little instrument,with its attached mirror, in his hand. We looked about for some objecton which to try its powers. On a bare limb of a tree not far away, forit was late in fall, sat a disconsolate crow.

  "Good," said Mr. Edison, "that will do." He touched a button at the sideof the instrument and a soft, whirring noise was heard.

  "Feathers," said Mr. Edison, "have a vibration period of three hundredand eighty-six million per second."

  He adjusted the index as he spoke. Then, through a sighting tube, heaimed at the bird.

  "Now watch," he said.

  Another soft whirr in the instrument, a momentary flash of light closearound it, and, behold, the crow had turned from black to white!

  "Its feathers are gone," said the inventor; "they have been dissipatedinto their constituent atoms. Now, we will finish the crow."

  Instantly there was another adjustment of the index, another outshootingof vibratory force, a rapid up and down motion of the index to include acertain range of vibrations, and the crow itself was gone--vanished inempty space! There was the bare twig on which a moment before it hadstood. Behind, in the sky, was the white cloud against which its blackform had been sharply outlined, but there was no more crow.

  "That looks bad for the Martians, doesn't it?" said the Wizard. "I haveascertained the vibration rate of all the materials of which their warengines, whose remains we have collected together, are composed. Theycan be shattered into nothingness in the fraction of a second. Even ifthe vibration period were not known, it could quickly be hit upon bysimply running through the gamut."

  "Hurrah!" cried one of the onlookers. "We have met the Martians and theyare ours."

  Such in brief was the first of the contrivances which Mr. Edisoninvented for the approaching war with Mars.

  And these facts had become widely known. Additional experiments hadcompleted the demonstration of the inventor's ability, with the aid ofhis wonderful instrument, to destroy any given object, or any part of anobject, provided that that part differed in its atomic constitution, andconsequently in its vibratory period, from the other parts.

  A most impressive public exhibit of the powers of the littledisintegrator was given amid the ruins of New York. On lower Broadway apart of the walls of one of the gigantic buildings, which had beendestroyed by the Martians, impended in such a manner that it threatenedat any moment to fall upon the heads of the passersby. The FireDepartment did not dare touch it. To blow it up seemed a dangerousexpedient, because already new buildings had been erected in itsneighborhood, and their safety would be imperilled by the flyingfragments. The fact happened to come to my knowledge.

  "Here is an opportunity," I said to Mr. Edison, "to try the powers ofyour machine on a large scale."

  "Capital," he instantly replied. "I shall go at once."

  For the work now in hand it was necessary to employ a battery ofdisintegrators, since the field of destruction covered by each wascomparatively limited. All of the impending portions of the wall must bedestroyed at once and together, for otherwise the danger would rather beaccentuated rather than annihilated. The disintegrators were placed uponthe roof of a neighboring building, so adjusted that their fields ofdestruction overlapped one another upon the wall. Their indexes were allset to correspond with the vibration period of the peculiar kind ofbrick of which the wall consisted. Then the energy was turned on, and ashout of wonder arose from the multitudes which had assembled at a safedistance to witness the experiment.

  The wall did not fall; it did not break asunder; no fragments shot thisway and that and high in the air; there was no explosion; no shock ornoise disturbed the still atmosphere--only a soft whirr, that seemed topervade everything and to tingle in the nerves of the spectators;and--what had been was not! The wall was gone! But high above and allaround the place where it had hung over the street with its threat ofdeath there appeared, swiftly billowing outward in every direction, afaint bluish cloud. It was the scattered atoms of the destroyed wall.

  And now the cry "On to Mars!" was heard on all sides. But for such anenterprise funds were needed--millions upon millions. Yet some of thefairest and richest portions of the earth had been impoverished by thefrightful ravages of those enemies who had dropped down upon them fromthe skies. Still, the money must be had. The salvation of the planet, aseveryone was now convinced, depended upon the successful negotiation ofa gigantic war fund, in comparison with which all the expenditures inall of the wars that had been waged by the nations for 2,000 years wouldbe insignificant. The electrical ships and the vibration engines must beconstructed by scores and thousands. Only Mr. Edison's immense resourcesand unrivaled equipment had enabled him to make the models whose powershad been so satisfactorily shown. But to multiply these upon a war scalewas not only beyond the resources of any indiv
idual--hardly a nation onthe globe in the period of its greatest prosperity could have undertakensuch a work. All the nations, then, must now conjoin. They must unitetheir resources, and if necessary, exhaust all their hoards, in order toraise the needed sum.

  Negotiations were at once begun. The United States naturally took thelead, and their leadership was never for a moment questioned abroad.

  Washington was selected as the place of meeting for a great congress ofnations. Washington, luckily, had been one of the places which had notbeen touched by the Martians. But if Washington had been a city composedof hotels alone, and every hotel so great as to be a little city initself, it would have been utterly insufficient for the accommodation ofthe innumerable throngs which now flocked to the banks of the Potomac.But when was American enterprise unequal to a crisis? The necessaryhotels, lodging-houses and restaurants were constructed with astoundingrapidity. One could see the city growing and expanding day by day andweek after week. It flowed over Georgetown Heights; it leaped thePotomac; it spread east and west, south and north; square mile aftersquare mile of territory was buried under the advancing buildings, untilthe gigantic city, which had thus grown up like a mushroom in a night,was fully capable of accommodating all its expected guests.

  At first it had been intended that the heads of the various governmentsshould in person attend this universal congress, but as the enterprisewent on, as the enthusiasm spread, as the necessity for haste becamemore apparent through the warning notes which were constantly soundedfrom the observatories where the astronomers were nightly beholding newevidences of threatening preparations in Mars, the kings and queens ofthe old world felt that they could not remain at home; that their properplace was at the new focus and center of the whole world--the city ofWashington. Without concerted action, without interchange of suggestion,this impulse seemed to seize all the old world monarchs at once.Suddenly cablegrams flashed to the government at Washington, announcingthat Queen Victoria, the Emperor William, the Czar Nicholas, Alphonso ofSpain, with his mother, Maria Christina; the old emperor Francis Josephand the empress Elizabeth, of Austria; King Oscar and Queen Sophia, ofSweden and Norway; King Humbert and Queen Margherita, of Italy; KingGeorge and Queen Olga, of Greece; Abdul Hamid, of Turkey; Tsait'ien,Emperor of China; Mutsuhito, the Japanese Mikado, with his beautifulPrincess Haruko; the President of France, the President of Switzerland,the First Syndic of the little republic of Andorra, perched on the crestof the Pyrenees, and the heads of all the Central and South Americanrepublics, were coming to Washington to take part in the deliberations,which, it was felt, were to settle the fate of earth and Mars.

  One day, after this announcement had been received, and the additionalnews had come that nearly all the visiting monarchs had set out,attended by brilliant suites and convoyed by fleets of warships, fortheir destination, some coming across the Atlantic to the port of NewYork, others across the Pacific to San Francisco, Mr. Edison said to me:

  "This will be a fine spectacle. Would you like to watch it?"

  "Certainly," I replied.

  The Ship of Space was immediately at our disposal. I think I have notyet mentioned the fact that the inventor's control over the electricalgenerator carried in the car was so perfect that by varying thepotential or changing the polarity he could cause it slowly or swiftly,as might be desired, to approach or recede from any object. The onlypractical difficulty was presented when the polarity of the electricalcharge upon an object in the neighborhood of the car was unknown tothose in the car, and happened to be opposite to that of the charge towhich the car, at that particular moment was bearing. In such a case, ofcourse, the car would fly toward the object, whatever it might be, likea pithball or a feather, attracted to the knob of an electrical machine.In this way, considerable danger was occasionally encountered, and a fewaccidents could not be avoided. Fortunately, however, such cases wererare. It was only now and then that, owing to some local cause,electrical polarities unknown to or unexpected by the navigators,endangered the safety of the car. As I shall have occasion to relatehowever, in the course of the narrative, this danger became more acuteand assumed at times a most formidable phase, when we had venturedoutside the sphere of the earth and were moving through the unexploredregions beyond.

  On this occasion, having embarked, we rose rapidly to a height of somethousands of feet and directed our course over the Atlantic. Whenhalf-way to Ireland, we beheld, in the distance, steaming westward, thesmoke of several fleets. As we drew nearer a marvelous spectacleunfolded itself to our eyes. From the northeast, their great gunsflashing in the sunlight and their huge funnels belching black volumesthat rested like thunder clouds upon the sea, came the mighty warshipsof England, with her meteor flag streaming red in the breeze, while theroyal insignia, indicating the presence of the ruler of the BritishEmpire, was conspicuously displayed upon the flagship of the squadron.

  Following a course more directly westward there appeared, under anotherblack cloud of smoke, the hulls and guns and burgeons of another greatfleet, carrying the tri-color of France, and bearing in its midst thehead of the magnificent republic of western Europe.

  Further south, beating up against the northerly winds came a third fleetwith the gold and red of Spain fluttering from its masthead. This, too,was carrying its King westward, where now, indeed, the star of empirehad taken its way.

  Rising a little higher, so as to extend our horizon, we saw coming downthe English channel, behind the British fleet, the black ships ofRussia. Side by side, or following one another's lead, these war fleetswere on a peaceful voyage that belied their threatening appearance.There had been no thought of danger to or from the forts and ports ofrival nations which they had passed. There was no enmity, and no fearbetween them when the throats of their ponderous guns yawned at oneanother across the waves. They were now, in spirit, all one fleet,having one object, bearing against one enemy, ready to defend but onecountry, and that country was the entire earth.

  It was some time before we caught sight of the emperor William's fleet.It seems that the Kaiser, although at first consenting to thearrangement by which Washington had been selected as the assemblingplace for the nations, afterwards objected to it.

  "I ought to do this thing myself," he had said. "My glorious ancestorswould never have consented to allow these upstart Republicans to lead ina warlike enterprise of this kind. What would my grandfather have saidto it? I suspect that it is some scheme aimed at the divine right ofkings."

  But the good sense of the German people would not suffer their ruler toplace them in a position so false and so untenable. And swept along bytheir enthusiasm the Kaiser had at last consented to embark upon hisflagship at Kiel, and now he was following the other fleets on theirgreat mission to the Western Continent.

  Why did they bring their warships when their intentions were peaceable,do you ask? Well, it was partly the effect of ancient habit, and partlydue to the fact that such multitudes of officials and members of rulingfamilies wished to embark for Washington that the ordinary means ofocean communications would have been utterly inadequate to convey them.

  After we had feasted our eyes on this strange sight, Mr. Edison suddenlyexclaimed: "Now let us see the fellows from the rising sun."

  The car was immediately directed toward the west. We rapidly approachedthe American coast, and as we sailed over the Allegheny Mountains andthe broad plains of the Ohio and the Mississippi, we saw crawlingbeneath us from west, south and north, an endless succession of railwaytrains bearing their multitudes on toward Washington. With marvelousspeed we rushed westward, rising high to skim over the snow-topped peaksof the Rocky Mountains and then the glittering rim of the Pacific wasbefore us. Half-way between the American Coast and Hawaii we met thefleets coming from China and Japan. Side by side they were plowing themain, having forgotten, or laid aside, all the animosities of theirformer wars.

  I well remember how my heart was stirred at this impressive exhibitionof the boundless influence which my country had come to exercise
overall the people of the world, and I turned to look at the man to whosegenius this uprising of the earth was due. But Mr. Edison, after hiswont, appeared totally unconscious of the fact that he was personallyresponsible for what was going on. His mind, seemingly, was entirelyabsorbed in considering problems, the solution of which might beessential to our success in the terrific struggle which was soon tobegin.

  "Well, have you seen enough?" he asked. "Then let us go back toWashington."

  As we speeded back across the continent we beheld beneath us again theburdened express trains rushing toward the Atlantic, and hundreds ofthousands of upturned eyes watched our swift progress, and volleys ofcheers reached our ears, for everyone knew that this was Edison'selectrical warship, on which the hope of the nation, and the hopes ofall the nations, depended. These scenes were repeated again and againuntil the car hovered over the still expanding capitol on the Potomac,where the unceasing ring of hammers rose to the clouds.

  _A consultation in Wizard Edison's laboratorybetween him and Professor Serviss on the best means of repaying thedamage wrought upon this planet by the Martians._]