
THE MARTIAN EMPEROR
- A Chronological Man Adventure -
by Andrew Mayne
Copyright 2011 Andrew Mayne
All Rights Reserved.
12.19.11k
Author's Note
The events described here were among the first of a series of "airship hysteria" panics leading into the decade preceding World War I. Due to the embarrassing nature of what happened, both to the government and major newspaper chains, the entire event was written off as a hoax. At the expressed request of the secretary of war, details and information were excised from public archives to protect vital U.S. military interests.
A.M.
New York City, Central Park, 1892
Police Sgt. Robert Nelson was in the middle of a dream where everything was curiously green when the telephone rang in the downstairs lounge of the boarding house he lived in with a half-dozen other bachelors. Never having much use for the infernal devices, he put a pillow over his head and did his best to ignore the annoying bell.
He was surprised at how well the pillow worked until he realized that someone else had picked up the telephone. All the better. If only he could get the pillow over his eyes to block out the bright green moonlight glowing from behind his window shade.
The stairs creaked as someone came walking upstairs. Nelson pulled the pillow tighter over his head, hoping that it would act as a talisman to prevent the inevitable knock on his door.
Mr. Granger, owner of the boarding house, rapped on the door with his familiar three-and-one knock. Nelson wanted to ignore it. He contemplated for a moment pretending to not be there, but he knew Granger saw him come in a few hours earlier. A call at this hour could only mean the incompetents at the police substation had managed to lock themselves in the holding jail or some other foolish deed.
He let out a loud grunt, informing Mr. Granger that he was headed down to the telephone. The footsteps retreated down the hall and Nelson pulled himself out of bed. He regretted the double nightcap the moment he stood up and squinted to ignore the harsh green light.
"What is it?" Nelson said into the receiver.
"Sssorry to disturb you, sir."
Nelson rolled his eyes. It was the nitwit Winfield. Nelson had been told that he only stammered in his presence but wasn't sure if that was a put-on or not. "What is it, lieutenant?"
"It's, it's about the, the, the light sir."
"The light? What are you talking about?"
"We've been getting hundreds, hundreds of calls, sir."
"What light?"
"The light over Central Park. The green, the green light."
Recognition seeped into Nelson's mind. The green moonlight. He couldn't remember that ever happening before. "What am I supposed to do about the light? Call an astronomer."
"People, people say it's getting closer."
"Closer?"
"Closer," Winfield repeated.
"How close?"
"People are calling to say they think it's landing."
"Landing? What am I supposed to do about that? Call Central."
"They called us. They said the mayor called them. His sister can't, can't sleep."
"Fine. Fine. Meet me at the east entrance. I'm two blocks away."
Nelson put the receiver back in the cradle and shook his head. He shuffled back upstairs, donned his police uniform over his pajamas and tucked his revolver into his belt. He wasn't worried about the light as much as the low-lifes and drifters who tended to use the park as a kind of shantytown when nobody was looking.
He walked out the front door and could clearly see the bright green light. His first reaction was that it was some kind of balloon lit with electrics. As he grew closer, he could see that it appeared metallic and was shaped like a pie plate. The green light emanated from several portholes around the circumference of the whatever-it-was.
Nelson didn't know what to make of it. It looked like some kind of Edison contraption for a fair. He just kept walking toward the park and staring up at the sky. His curiosity built until he tripped while crossing the street when his foot got caught in the gutter.
Winfield and Lt. Haywood were waiting for him at the east entrance, as were several hundred other people who'd gathered at that late hour to see what the light was. Most of them had dressing gowns and robes thrown over nightclothes.
Winfield and Haywood were doing their best to keep people out of the park. Nelson walked over to the entrance and stared up at the thing. It was now just a few dozen yards above the ground, just over the treetops.
Nelson looked at Winfield. The man returned the look, expecting him to explain everything.
Nelson turned around. The crowd was silent but waiting for him to do something.
"It's, it's like something out of one of those Jules Verne novels."
Nelson grunted. He had no idea what Winfield was talking about. "I guess I should I have a closer look." He hesitated, hoping that someone else would have a better idea. When nobody spoke up, he entered the park.
He kept his eyes on the green thing as he walked across the grass meadow. As he drew closer, he could make out rivets and seams in the hull. It had to be some kind of flying contraption, he decided. But whose?
There were no supports underneath it. And it didn't appear to be tethered to the ground like a balloon.
He stomach began to feel a bit unsettled as he thought about the possibility of it being some kind of war machine. Perhaps a submarine of the sky?
He reached down to tap the edge of his holster when his foot hit something. There was a loud scream. Nelson fumbled with the catch to pull his gun free. Several shapes low to the ground came running past him, all of them making bleating-like sounds. One of them nearly knocked him over.
He brought his pistol up and realized they weren't making bleating-like sounds. They were bleating because they were sheep. The flying machine was hovering over the sheep's meadow in the park. They, in turn, all decided at the same time that it was a good idea to leave.
Nelson put his gun back in his holster, although he wasn't sure if the sheep had the right idea after all in fleeing.
He reached the edge of the clearing where the strange object was now hovering only a few dozen yards off the ground.
Now what? Nelson wasn't quite sure what his civic duties were at this point. Should he shout at it? Ask them to leave? Ask who to leave?
Almost in answer to his question, a large shaft of light poured out of the underside of the craft. He had to squint. The buzzing sound he realized that he'd heard all the way back at the boarding house had grown louder. Something was happening.
He hoped it wasn't a bad thing but couldn't imagine a good thing happening under these circumstances.
The light shut off below the craft. Something now stood underneath it.
Nelson thought it was another strange device at first. Then it moved. Only loosely man-shaped, it was definitely not man-sized. And it was carrying something massive in its arms.
The strange man had to be nine feet tall by Nelson's reckoning. The green light from the craft cast an eerie shadow around the figure. It had two arms, and two long legs that ended in heavy boots. For a head, it had a large red globe that seemed to be filled with red gas. To Nelson, it looked kind of like a deep-sea diving suit, with the exception of the single globe for a helmet.
Nelson was still trying to figure out what he was looking at before he realized it was walking toward him. He wanted to run away. He touched the holster of his gun again and flipped open the catch.
"Stop right where you are!" Nelson shouted.
The strange man kept walking toward him.
"Stop or I'll shoot!" Nelson raised his gun on the strange man.
"PUT AWAY YOUR WEAPON, EARTHLING!" a loud voice echoed across the meadow.
Nelson gripped the gun with both hands.
A blinding flash of blue light shot into his eyes. Something knocked him over. His head felt numb. When he looked up, the strange man was now towering over him. He raised his gun to fire and then noticed the barrel was bent ninety degrees to the side.
The strange man turned the large gray object he was carrying and set it down at Nelson's feet. It made a loud thud and sank into the grass.
"WE BRING YOU GREETINGS FROM THE MARTIAN EMPEROR!"
Nelson couldn't tell if the sound was coming from the strange man or the craft above his head. He looked at the metal slab that was now standing at his feet. It was covered in writing.
The strange man who had placed it there turned and walked back toward the center of the meadow under the vessel. A cone of light surrounded him and then he was gone.
The buzzing sound grew louder. The craft began to lift. It floated into the sky and then vanished.
He was alone in the dark meadow with the metal slab. It was too dark to read what was written on it; he could only make out its silhouette against the stars of the sky.
He had no idea what just happened but was pretty sure it was important. He screamed when he felt something touch his ear. His heart tried to beat its way through his chest, and he resisted the urge to fire his bent pistol, lest it explode in his hands. Nelson resigned himself to a horrible fate as he felt something warm and sticky salivate on his ear. He kept waiting for the inevitable pain to set in as monstrous teeth devoured him, but it never came. He felt the downy fur of the sheep on his cheek and then breathed a sigh of relief as the animal moved on to munch on a patch of grass.
April Malone looked into the face of the strange man standing in the middle of the office. Their eyes were locked. Her lips were apart, frozen in mid-utterance as she was about to remind the man of her name. He'd shushed her and insisted that she give him the chance to remember it.
He'd only moments before emerged from the mysterious vault-like door behind which he spent months -- perhaps years -- doing god knows what. April had seen him emerge only once before, the first time they'd met. He'd been experiencing a kind of amnesia then as well. He couldn't remember then if he'd ever met her.
This time he could tell in an instant when he saw the crestfallen look upon her face when he'd emerged and asked, "Have we met?"
It would have been an innocent question if Smith hadn't been the most extraordinary person she'd ever met and taken her on an equally extraordinary adventure. The question was like a hairpin in her heart. His face was helpless. The moment the question left his lips, he saw her reaction and regretted the question. April's reaction would have gone from surprise to hurt if he hadn't followed up the question with a quick addendum.
"You seem like a very special person," he said, followed by fumbling in his pocket for a white note card. "It says my name is Smith. But you already know that." His nose caught the scent of fresh pastries and coffee and jerked to the service trolley she'd set them out upon. His feet took him there, yet he never broke eye contact with April as his hands forced doughnuts and eclairs into his mouth. Crumbs fell to the floor as he ravaged them.
She watched as life almost seemed to flow back into the gaunt face of her mysterious employer. She hoped his memory would return along with his vitality.
April reached a thumb out to his cheek and wiped away a crust of white sugar powder.
Smith smiled. "Where are my manners!" He held a jelly doughnut out to her.
April waved it off. His childlike innocence was hard to stay angry at. She knew he couldn't help his condition, at least she thought he couldn't help it. She still wasn't quite sure what the cause was or if it even had anything to do with his long absences.
"Miss ..." Smith started the sentence, hoping her name would come to him as the syllables rolled off his tongue, to no avail. He looked at his white card again and then turned to the desk at the right side of the room. "I have a feeling that we're supposed to do something very important ...."
"I think ..."
"No, don't tell me your name. Please. Let the fog clear."
He sat down at the desk and turned a metal crank on the side that powered the machinery inside. "Here we go. I think that's doing something."
"You ..."
"Please, miss. Let me think of it." Smith stared at the desk and waited for something to happen.
April closed her mouth and watched as Smith continued to turn the crank. He ignored the blue punchcard in the middle of the desk. He was supposed to place that into the brass slot, or at least that was the way it worked the last time he sat down at the contraption. But she remained silent, not wanting to disturb him.
Smith turned the handle for a minute and then looked at the desk, confused. "It appears to be broken."
April cleared her throat and eyed the blue card.
"Oh, of course! How silly of me," said Smith after he followed her gaze. He smiled and picked up the card. He stared at it in his hand, unsure of what to do next. "Whoops, looks like I got a bit of jam on there." Smith wiped the red glob off the corner. He absentmindedly licked his finger as he held the card up to the gaslight. "Hate to foul up the works with a bit of jelly." He continued to stare at the card.
April raised an eyebrow.
"All right, Miss Malone, tell me what I'm supposed to do with the card, but please don't tell me your name. Sometimes it could take days or never come to me at all. Please don't be hurt."
April shook her head. "The slot. Place it into the slot on the desk."
"Yes, of course!" Smith leaned over the desk and fed the card into the brass slot and then began to turn the crank. He looked up at her and smiled as he turned it and then looked back down at the desk when it began to make a mechanical sound. "I just said your name, didn't I?"
"Yes." April tried to restrain a shy smile.
The desk made a bell sound. "How extraordinary." Smith's eyes lit up.
April walked over to the desk and looked down. The dials were still spinning.
Smith gazed up at her and smiled. "I don't normally remember names so quickly. At least I don't remember remembering them." The dials stopped spinning. A card spit out of the slot in the middle of the desk. Smith pulled it out and slid it into a metal device and started to slide metal plates back and forth over it. "This will take just a second, Judith."
Judith? April's smile vanished.
"That was very clever what you did with the cannon on the pirate scow. Always a quick thinker." Smith made a few notes on a sheet of paper and continued to be oblivious to anything but the task at hand.
"Who's Judith?" April tried to make the question flat and neutral, as if it were just a matter of small talk.
"Judith is dead." Smith looked up. "Why did you bring her up?" His face looked hurt.
"I ...." April wasn't sure what to say. "I misunderstood you." The truth was there was little about Smith she did understand.
"Yes. I'm sure things are quite confusing. I feel especially foggy today. I can't quite seem to get this contraption to work. I'd like to ring the neck of whoever built it, but I suspect that it's me. I'm certain there's something very urgent for us to deal with."
"Smith, perhaps," April started. She desperately wanted to tell him what she already knew.
"Now, now, Miss ... Miss. Damn it. In a moment." He was frustrated that he forgot her name again. "Very foggy. I had the strangest dream about a sewer and a giant squid. A squid in fresh water! How peculiar."
"Sounds interesting," April mumbled. A chill went down her spine as she recalled the events of their previous adventure.
"Quite. If it wasn't for the most extraordinary young woman, I would have met my end. Amazing girl. Very intelligent. Quite pretty. If only she ...." Smith looked up at April's blushing cheeks. "Oh my."
If only she? April wanted to know where the sentence finished.
"I don't mean to carry on about another young woman like that. I don't know if that's presently rude or not. No matter. Miss, are you all right? You look a bit flushed."
April turned around, walked over to her desk and picked up the newspaper that had been sitting there since Smith burst into the room.
Smith looked up from the contraption as April dropped the paper onto his desk. "I'll take a look at it later. In the meantime, I have to figure out what's so urgent that needs my, I mean our, attention."
"April Malone."
Smith looked up at her. "I told you not to tell me!"
"My name is April Malone, and the papers all say that the Martians are invading."
"Good lord, Miss Malone. Why didn't you tell me sooner!"
Ebelin Contral felt goosebumps on the back of his fleshy arms as he read the headline of the newspaper again. Creatures squawked and roared from the various cages in his menagerie, none of them interrupting his concentration. They never did, even when they cried out in pain or loneliness. He was immune to their pleas. He had to be to do the kinds of things that he did.
He set the paper down and placed a bloody scalpel on the crease to weigh it down. Martians. It had to be a hoax. He was fairly certain of that. But still. His mind wandered. His eyes examined the illustration with careful scrutiny. What if they were real? And so close at hand?
"Monsieur, it must be a charade of some kind," came a gravel-edged voice from inside a small cage near his desk.
Contral turned to the speaker. "I didn't know you could read."
"Oui, monsieur. I can read. I can dance. I can even sing if you would like."
"No, I don't think that will be necessary. Tell me, why do you think it's a hoax?"
Small feet shifted. Furry hands clinched the bars of the cage. "Perhaps I spoke too hastily. I think this opportunity is too much to pass up. Perhaps you should return me to the carnival so you can pursue this with all your energy. After all, how often does one get to meet men from another world?"
"I think we are more than up to the task of entertaining you and all the other guests here. Wouldn't you like to meet these Martians as well?"
A tiny fist knocked on the walls of the metal cage. "Not under these conditions, monsieur. I'd much prefer it in some place a little less ... depressing."
"A necessary health precaution," said Contral.
"Whose health? Yours or mine?"
"Everyone's. We can't have our city overrun by strange vermin. It's my responsibility to see to it that doesn't happen."
"I assure you, monsieur, I am no rat. I was born of Christian blood, just as you. My father was a Huguenot missionary and my mother a converted Algonquin. A sweet, pious woman who misses her son dearly. If only you would let me send her a letter to inform her that I'm well and being taken care of."
"A likely story." Contral picked up the scalpel and tapped his chin as he looked into the small, dark cage. "We still haven't determined what you are."
"I'm a freak. A mutation. That is all. Some men, like you, are destined to be bald. Me, the opposite. Some to be tall, me the opposite. That is all. I was unfortunate enough to have two afflictions. Or blessed, depending upon how you look at it. You'll have nothing to gain by looking inside me, monsieur. That's the least interesting part about me."
Contral wasn't so sure. He wanted to know if the small furry man was a freak as he insisted or some other race of man previously unknown to science. He was tempted to have a look at his internal organs but was afraid that once that was done, if he proved human, the inquiry would reach an impasse and he would have to answer to the people who paid for his menagerie as to why he wasted such an interesting specimen.
He had the curious desire to see what would happen if he attempted to mate the little man with a woman. One of his assistants was making gentle inquiries into the Bowery and Tenderloin districts to see if a suitable woman could be found. Perhaps a Chinese would do. There were plenty of them secreted about various basements.
Would the offspring be human? Another furry man? If so, what would that mean? Was there yet another lower race for him and his superiors to be mindful of? His mind wandered back to the artist's illustration of the Martian Ambassador and he was overwhelmed with a frightful thought. What if these Martians were real? What if they looked upon humanity in the same way he regarded the furry little man and other undesirables? Was the Martian visitation a precursor to a planet-wide cleansing? What if they were more advanced versions of himself?
Contral used the sharp blade of the scalpel to cut the illustration from the newspaper. He placed the clipping at the top of his desk and scribbled a note for his assistants. Hoax or not, it was of the utmost urgency that they capture one of these Martians, either to negotiate with, perhaps a secret alliance, or to dissect and find a weakness.
"Monsieur, my friends. I am sure they miss me. They are bound to be looking for me."
"Oh, they have. But they won't find you here." Contral's gaze drifted across the dark stones that lined the menagerie. "We're in a most secure location. Practical, as well," he said with a grin.
"My friends are clever."
"How clever can they be if they work for pennies at the Coney Island sideshow? Besides, I have the law on my side." Contral jerked a thumb toward a plaque on the wall behind his desk. It sat between two dirty cages and a blanket of cobwebs.
"I have admired your placard, monsieur. But I couldn't help but notice that it says nothing of public health. It seems your political appointment is that of Chasseuse de rat Officiale. Perhaps my English is not as good as I thought. But that would make you the city's official rat catcher and not its public health supervisor."
Contral waved a hand at the cages and tables in the menagerie. "Not all rats walk on four legs." He tapped the drawing of the Martian. "Some may come from the stars." He was struck by an interesting thought. His hand reached inside his desk and pulled out a folder with large red letters written across it. "Would you consider this a very distressing event?"
"My capture, monsieur? But, of course. If you mean this Martian affair, why yes, I suppose so. But not nearly so personally distressing."
"I agree. My colleagues have been in search of a particular rat, one that likes to burrow for very long lengths of time and then poke his nose out when it's the least convenient. A very long-lived rat, it would appear. I've been under the impression that what we've really needed is the right bait to catch this rat." Contral picked up the Martian illustration. "Hoax or not, I think this affair could provide for just the thing. I suspect the rat I'm seeking won't be able to resist this."
"I hope he's smarter than moi and doesn't find himself unconscious from a tainted bottle of rum and a sharp blow to the head."
"He's quite smart. Perhaps the smartest. But that's his undoing. With his intelligence comes a great weakness: his curiosity. It's quite possible, with the right nudging, I can get him to step right into one of these cages." Contral smiled.
The furry man in the cage looked at the maniacal glee on the cruel man's face. For the sake of the other man, he hoped he'd be more clever than he was when Contral's men in black coats came for him backstage at the carnival and that he avoided the city altogether.
Martians or not, he looked at the blood-stained floors and knew that nothing good could come for this man if he crossed paths with Contral and his minions. The furry man regarded Contral as a cruel child who collected creatures for the sole sake of seeing them scream as he pulled them apart.
Smith's private train raced across the track at eighty miles an hour toward the island of Manhattan. April looked out the window at the night sky. Sparse lights could be seen between the forests and small towns between Boston and New York City.
"The train, it's so quiet," said April. Other than a gentle swaying, it barely seemed to be moving at all.
Smith was sitting on the opposite couch, examining the newspaper article. "It's electric. Powered by a dynamo and a large battery. An engine charges them when necessary. Otherwise, yes, it's quite silent. Technically, we're not supposed to be using these tracks."
April turned away from the window. "What if another train is coming? Will your engineer have enough time to react?"
"Engineer ... well, Miss Malone, there is no engineer. It's controlled by an automaton. I mean, really, there's only two directions, forward and backward. As far as colliding with another train, I have two systems to prevent that. One is a kind of microphone that listens for other trains. The other is a kind of sonic eye, I call it. There's a device at the front of the train that blows air through a high-pitched whistle. Another microphone, tuned to only that frequency, listens to see if it returns. If it does, then we know we have a problem."
"Then what?"
"Then we have a problem." Smith gestured to a map of the Eastern Seaboard on one wall. Railway lines were marked out in sharp blue. Small metal trains magnetically stuck to the map appeared to move slowly. "That shows us where the trains are supposed to be. It's updated from telegraphs time to time as stations send signals down the line."
April sat down on a red crushed velvet couch. The salon car looked far fancier than something she would have expected from the eccentric yet practical Smith.
"Is your room to your liking?"
"Quite so," said April. He'd given her the master quarters, which took up an entire car.
Smith nodded. "And your mother?"
"Excited that I get to go to New York on such short notice." April had given her mother only the minimum of information about her trip.
Smith had hesitated to ask April to accompany him. She'd insisted, and he only made a slight protest. Things were still a bit foggy for him. He still wasn't quite sure about much of his own history, and he only had a vague recollection of her. He could tell, from the feeling in his gut, that he was fond of her.
They'd only boarded the train an hour before. After April had shown Smith the newspaper, he decided that it was urgent that they get to New York City as quickly as possible. At first he led her up a staircase behind the big metal door. He then stopped halfway up and decided to take a different means of transportation and led her to the basement, where his secret train was waiting. April wanted to ask him what means of transportation was waiting in the attic but decided to ask him at another time.
She'd heard of underground rails in London and knew that there was talk in Boston of building one and a failed attempt of a pneumatic in New York, but to her knowledge, Smith's train was the first operating one outside of Europe. The train had traveled a mile underground before emerging from a warehouse near the central rail lines that serviced Boston.
The tunnel, Smith explained, had been dug as a test for the Boston Metropolitan Rail system in the 1860s and then abandoned. One of his companies had purchased it at auction for pennies on the dollar when the other company went bankrupt. The public, and Boston at large, forgot about it. April suspected that much of Smith's enterprise was based upon people having short attention spans.
She sat there watching him out of the corner of her eye as he pored over the newspaper, and she wondered how many details of his own life he had forgotten or overlooked in pursuit of the big mysteries that he chased. She looked back up at the map with the moving trains and marveled at Smith's offhanded creativity.
"Bagatelle," said Smith, as he noticed her looking at the moving map.
"Pardon me?"
"I like to make amusement games. A while ago, quite a while ago, I came up with a mechanized version of the Bagatelle game. I think you call it pinball now. The machinists who make my games also make some of my notions like the map with the moving trains."
"Yes, but you said it was updated by the telegraph? We haven't stopped yet."
Smith's eyes lit up as a thought came to mind. "Pardon me, Miss Malone, but you've given me an idea. It's a bit dastardly, I admit. But under the circumstances, maybe necessary." Smith sat up and walked over to a wooden cabinet. He pulled a key from his pocket and unlocked the cabinet. "There's something missing in the newspaper accounts. They show the front of the Martian obelisk but not the back. On the front they've got this indecipherable language. On the reverse, I suspect, is the translation into English. I wonder why they haven't revealed this."
Inside the cabinet was a brass machine with several knobs, cylinders and a telegraph switch. Smith pulled a stool over to the device and sat down. April moved closer to the edge of the couch to watch.
"You must keep this a secret, Miss Malone." Smith began to tap the telegraph switch.
"Of course."
"When they started stringing telegraphs across the globe, I was struck with an interesting thought. A telegraph is a means of converting the spoken word into a series of simple patterns. Take, for example, dot dash, dot dash dash dot, dot dash dot, dot dot, dot dash dot dot. That's your given name in Morse code. If someone wanted to listen in on a conversation between two parties, it's a very easy matter to do that. I know with good reason that all the world governments do this very thing, despite whether it's proper or not. Foreign embassies use coded signals to avoid eavesdroppers from listening in on this. But within a country, communications between one government agency to another usually are not encoded. If some fiend decided to listen in on a communique between officials in New York City and Washington, it would be a simple matter."
"But would you have to be actively listening for the transmission and connected into the telegraph?" April wondered if Smith had people doing that.
"That's one way to do that. But an inefficient way. Why use a person when a machine could do the job better? Remember, words on a telegraph are converted into dots and dashes. You can use the same parts that make a telegraph relay into a device that listens for certain words. Like the dots and dashes of your name. Or the dots and dashes of a word like 'Martian.' Then those dots and dashes could be recorded to a cylinder and replayed at a later time."
"If some fiendish person went through the trouble of doing such a thing," said April.
Smith tapped away at his telegraph. "Said fiendish person could build a box that waited for a series of dots and dashes that told it what to listen for and place it at critical telegraph junctions. And then have them replayed after a matter of time."
"Yes, but we're still moving."
"Induction, Miss Malone. This rail line and several others have a telegraph line running along the tracks. A special fitting can receive and transmit along it. Did our subscription to American Railroad Journal lapse?"
"I must not have gotten to that issue yet." April rolled her eyes. Smith subscribed to every print publication imaginable and a few unimaginable. Part of her duty was to help keep track of them and remember the details of ones singled out for her.
"I'm using 'Martian' as a keyword. Do you have any suggestions?"
"Ares, the Greek counterpart?"
"Brilliant, Miss Malone. I would imagine officials would want to use some kind of light code to prevent loose lips at telegraph offices from leaking the details to the press." Smith types the sequence into his telegraph switch. A series of beeps and longer beeps played back, indicating the signal was received. "Excellent. Now we just have to wait."
Smith sat back on the couch and looked up at the moving map. "Another three hours. It should be nightfall when we arrive." He picked up the paper and held the illustration of the Martian up for April to see. "What do you think?"
"Life on other planets? Why not? After all, there must be thousands of planets out there."
"Millions. Yes, Miss Malone. But do you think this Martian Ambassador is indeed that? It's not the same question." He turned the newspaper toward himself. "I'm troubled by a few things."
"He does look very manlike," said April. "I would expect something with tentacles."
"Yes, there is that. But there's something else. Take a look again at the illustration. What stands out to you?"
April took the paper from him and examined the drawing. The Martian appeared to be wearing a suit not too different from Smith's own mechanical armor, which looked like a diving suit. "I'd expect the atmosphere to be different, so that explains the glass helmet. I'm not sure why the gas in it is red. I don't believe the Martian atmosphere is red, so much as the planet. At least not according to what the astronomers have said."
"There's one detail that really bothers me."
April tried to see what he was talking about. The Martian appeared like a very tall man. The arms and legs seemed exaggeratedly long. She took a closer look at the legs and noticed something peculiar. "The boots."
"The boots?"
"Wasn't that what you were talking about?" she asked.
"No, I thought the backpack looked odd. The pipes weren't going into the helmet like you'd expect. What is it about the boots?"
April tapped a finger on the thick soles. "I had an uncle, a short man, who used to wear boots with very thick soles and lifts on the inside. They gave him another three or four inches."
Smith examined the boots in the illustration. "Yes. Very good, Miss Malone! These boots would add at least a foot to his height. Maybe more. Our Martian is trying to masquerade as a taller man."
"So you're convinced it's a hoax?"
"It has to be. That I'm certain. The reason why is a different matter. It seems our make-believe-Martian friends have gone through a lot of effort for this charade, and I fear this is only the beginning," said Smith.
"So you're convinced he's not a Martian?"
"Of course not. He looks nothing like a Martian."
April was about to ask Smith what he meant by that statement when his telegraph machine began to emit a series of loud clacks. Smith grabbed a paper tape that was being fed out of it.
"Curious," said Smith as he read it. "It appears we've found the purpose of the Martian's visit."
"Ransom!" shouted the mayor. "It's a shakedown from space! I've got your man Croker at Tammany Hall shaking me on one end. The president forcing me to bring in that do-gooder on the other. And now, and now! I've got bug-eyed aliens showing up from space, asking for a payoff."
"What did the president say?"
Mayor Grant stared at the phone receiver he'd just slammed down. "Talked to him again. He doesn't believe it. I don't believe it. It's got to be a hoax."
"What about this Sgt. Nelson?" asked Horace Mayweather, the mayor's unofficial political adviser and very unofficial bribe collector.
"Honest enough. War hero. Trustworthy enough to be on the right take."
"So you think it's a hoax?"
"It has to be, right? It looks like a shakedown to me. You should know."
Mayweather ignored the comment. "What's the president want you to do?"
"Get to the bottom of this. Keep a lid on it. It's only a matter of time before the ransom demands get out."
"May I see the document?" asked Mayweather.
Mayor Grant pushed the photograph over to him and sat back to look out the window while he stroked his beard.
The Emperor of Mars decrees that all inhabitants of the Planet Earth are under his Supreme Rule.
All Nations of the Earth shall cease their conflicts.
The Citizens of Earth shall raise the red Martian Flag of The Emperor on all Government Buildings and submit to his benevolent rule.
The Citizens of Earth shall pay the Sovereign Martian Emperor a tribute of 1,000 kilos of gold and deliver it to the location where this monolith has been placed on the fifth day and do so every 500 days.
Failure to obey to the rule of The Emperor of Mars will be considered an act of war, subjecting the inhabitants of Earth to the terrible Space Ray.
"What makes you so certain it's a ransom?" asked Mayweather.
"Isn't it? Even if he is from Mars, it's still a demand that we pay up or get attacked, in this case by that 'space ray.' There's a hoot." Grant swiveled in his chair to face Mayweather. "You're sure your pal Croker has nothing to do with this?"
Mayweather shook his head. "I don't think it's his style nor any of the Five Points gangs."
"So it's an out-of-town job."
"Very out of town from what they want us to believe."
"What's the angle? I don't get it. I have no idea how they pulled off the stunt with the glowing vehicle. Damn thing woke my sister. Half the town saw the glow. The Martian man, maybe a guy in some getup. I have no idea how he could have lifted that monolith. The damn thing weighs a ton!" He shook his head. "I'm sure it's a trick, like the sideshow at Coney Island. But for what end?"
"Looks like they want gold. A lot of it."
"Yes, that's what it says. But whoever is pulling this has got to know we aren't going to fall for a light show and man playing Halloween dress-up." Mayor Grant picked up the photograph of the back end of the monolith. "A lot of trouble for a bit of sport, don't you think?"
"Have you considered the possibility that it's legitimate?"
Grant's mouth froze while trying to decide if he should take Mayweather seriously. He was one of the most clever men he'd known. A bit on the rough side, self-educated but very intelligent. "Now you're sounding like my sister. If this gets out, we'll have half the city, half the world, putting out red flags and bowing down to this Martian Emperor!"
"It is a possibility worth considering," said Mayweather. "It's my responsibility to make you aware of all the angles. That's all I'm saying. They chose New York City for a reason."
"What are you saying?"
"I'm suggesting that we should be aware of a potential opportunity. If it's a one-time hoax, then that's the end of it. If it's not, and it's the product of an entity with more resources than we're aware of, then we need to keep that in mind. One thousand kilos of gold is a lot of money."
Grant rapped his fingers on his desk. "So, if it is real?"
"The Martians chose our city. Your city. Perhaps they'll want to build an embassy. Maybe even make us the seat of Earth's government."
Grant let that idea roll around in his head for a moment. "So you're saying there's something to be made out of the fact that they chose us and not Washington or London?"
"There's something to be made for the fact that they chose you, mayor. They chose you to be the representative for our world."
"They didn't exactly choose me. They dropped it off in Central Park."
"True. But not the White House nor the Governor's Mansion nor Buckingham Palace. All I'm suggesting is that maybe we want to make sure that's not lost on the world." Ever the political opportunist, Mayweather's brain was already calculating the angles.
"And how do we do that?"
Mayweather picked up the photograph and turned it toward the mayor. "We leak this translation to the press. But we emphasize that the Martians chose you, that they chose New York City. We explain that we've already been declared the center of the world and you our ambassador."
"But it's a hoax! Nobody will fall for it."
"That's why we leak and we don't endorse. We call it a hoax. Meanwhile, we plant the idea we want them to believe, cover all our bases."
"Protect every angle."
"Exactly." Mayweather sat back, satisfied.
"There's one problem."
There was a knock at the outer door. Grant's secretary could be heard talking to a man. Mayweather turned and then looked back at Grant.
"The president sent one of his men to come 'assist' in this investigation. He might keep us from running this show."
"Can we get him in on it?" asked Mayweather.
Grant shook his head. "He's insufferably honest."
"Maybe a soft threat?"
"Lord no. He likes to speak softly but carries a very big stick."
Mayweather raised an eyebrow. "Oh my."
"Yep." Grant stood up to greet the man as the secretary opened the door. "How's buffalo hunting?"
"Funny. How's the graft business?" said the man as he nodded to Mayor Grant and looked down at Mayweather.
Grant introduced them. "Mr. Mayweather, I think you know our friend here. He tried to win election to this office a while ago, if I remember correctly. Now he does some work for the president on a few task forces, I believe."
Mayweather gave the man a curt nod. The man's reputation had a habit of entering a room long before him and never quite leaving.
"So tell me about this Martian nonsense," said Theodore Roosevelt as he pulled out a cigar and sat down.
It was night by the time Smith and April made it from the train yard to Central Park in a hired carriage. Smith had wanted to use the motorcycle he kept in the storage car but demurred when he realized that would mean Miss Malone would have to ride in the back in her dress. She was too polite to protest, but he could read the look in her eyes when he mentioned possible modes of transportation. It also made sense to attract as little attention as possible when the city was already under siege by strange men and machines.
He helped her down from the carriage, and they took in the sight.
Both entrances to the park were blocked off. Uniformed policemen stood on either side. A large crowd of several hundred people had gathered to look at the site of the Martian landing, although they couldn't see anything from either edge of the park.
Off to one side, there was a crowd of newspapermen and a few photographers with large wooden cameras and tripods. Smith took April by the elbow and guided her in that direction. An official in a top hat was making a speech.
Smith tried to push themselves in closer, but the crowd was too thick. He could make out a few details of what the man was saying.
"It doesn't look like they've announced the ransom demand yet," said Smith. He'd intercepted the demand back on the train.
"Is that good or bad?" asked April.
"We'll find out." Smith escorted her to a policeman standing near the west entrance.
"Can I help you?" asked the frustrated-looking man.
"I'm Dr. Hellgood. I've been sent to have a look at the monolith," Smith lied.
"Were you, now?" The policeman rolled his eyes. He pointed his billy club toward the press crowd. "Your section is over there."
"Listen, my assistant and I just spent a long train ride from Philadelphia. We were asked specifically to come here and take a look at this monolith and help decipher it."
"Sent by whom?"
"I can't really say," said Smith.
"Then I can't really let you in."
April spoke up. "All right, professor. Maybe we should just go on over to the newspapermen and explain to them what you already deciphered. I'm sure they'll be interested."
"Er, um, yes." Smith was taken by surprise by April's ploy. "I'm sure they'd love to hear about the gold bars and the space ray."
"Shhh!" The policeman put a finger to his lips and grabbed Smith by the arm to turn him away from the crowd. He gave a nervous glance over his shoulder to see if anyone else had heard. "How did you know about that?" he asked in a low voice.
"The professor deciphered it, of course," said April. "That is, after all, what he does."
"All right. All right. Go through the path to the left. You'll see Sgt. Nelson near the tent."
"Tent?" asked Smith.
"They put a tent over the damn thing. Pressmen have been climbing on buildings with telescopes to get a look. One of them even tried hanging a camera on a balloon. The Navy had a fit over that one."
"The Navy?"
"They're arguing with the mayor over who has jurisdiction. I hear the Army is, too. Nobody knows what's going on."
Smith nodded to the man and then led April down the path. They crossed the sheep's meadow, where a scattering of sheep munched on grass and ignored the men walking about. Filament lights illuminated the tent in the middle of the park.
Sgt. Nelson stood guard outside the tent. He gave them a wary eye. "May I help you?"
"I'm here about the deciphering," said Smith. "The military said they wanted one more expert. Don't know how much help I can be. Any child can decipher that Martian text and read the demands and the ransom." He looked Nelson up and down. "I bet you saw it right away."
Nelson scratched his mustache. "Not exactly, mister ..."
"Professor Hellgood," said April.
"And this is my assistant, Miss June," said Smith. "I was just telling her that you were the man that bravely faced down the Martian brute, wasn't I?"
"Oh my!" April knew from acting training that she was overdoing it but decided to push it. "I would have died of fright, sergeant. You are the most brave man." She reached out a gloved hand and touched the sergeant's arm. His cheeks blushed.
"Just doing my duty, miss."
"Sergeant, I was wondering if I might have a look at the monolith up close?"
"Of course. Of course." Nelson held the flap open for them. "Edison's men came out and rigged the electric earlier in the day."
"Edison?" asked Smith before he stepped inside. His voice was flat.
April could tell there was something wrong but decided not to ask at that point. Smith waved her into the tent and followed in after her.
The obelisk was nine feet tall and an imposing artifact. It tapered from the bottom to the top and was made from a dull gray metal. The Martian script covered the front of it. On the back, in simple type-set lettering, was what they assumed was the English transcription. Smith reached out and touched it.
"Lead." He stood back. "Quite heavy." He turned to the open flap. "Sergeant, may we ask you a few questions?"
Nelson poked his head inside the tent.
"The newspaper accounts say that the Martian actually carried this and set it down."
"Yes, sir. I watched him step from his spacecraft and set it down right here." He pointed to the grass. "I was lying right there when it happened. That was when he used his stun pistol on me."
"No ill effects?" asked Smith.
Nelson shook his head. "It's what I imagined getting hit by an electric eel would be like." He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his revolver with the bent barrel. "They've tried to take it from me, but I won't let them."
"May I see?" asked April.
Nelson smiled and handed her the gun. She admired it and then handed it to Smith.
Smith felt the bent barrel. It was an almost ninety-degree curve. Other than that, it looked brand new. He rubbed his sleeve on it and then handed it back to Nelson. "Can you tell me anything that wasn't in the newspaper account?"
The sergeant thought for a moment and pulled at his mustache.
"Even a small detail," said April. She put a finger to her lips, feigning nervousness as she cast a glance at the towering monument.
"Well, there was one thing. He had a smell about him. I remember thinking to myself afterward, that's what Mars must have smelled like. A kind of sulfur smell."
"Like rotten eggs?" asked Smith.
Nelson shook his head. "No. More like a burnt sulfur. Kind of like gunpowder, but this is different."
"Interesting. So the Martian stunned you before you were able to fire your gun?"
"Like a clever devil. Knocked me on my ...." He looked at April. "Knocked me on my back is what he did."
"I take it you're a good shot, otherwise?" asked Smith.
"Quite. Now excuse me. I have to make sure the Army and the Navy don't come to fisticuffs outside. This is still NYPD jurisdiction. Be much longer?"
Smith could tell that was Nelson politely asking them to leave.
"Just one more minute, sergeant. I want to show Miss June some of the deciphering."
Nelson nodded and then closed the flap.
"All right, Miss Malone, tell me what you see." Smith held his hands apart, gesturing to the whole tent.
April walked around the monolith and gave a look back at Smith. She couldn't tell if he'd already observed something and was playing one of his games to see if she noticed it too or if he genuinely wanted her to notice something.
"Well, the sheep's meadow is an odd place, for one."
Smith nodded.
"I have to say I'm not that impressed by the monument. Although it looks angular, I can't say that it looks like something from an advanced race." She traced her fingers along the letters.
"And what would you expect from an advanced race?"
"Something we couldn't make. I think any foundry could make something like this."
"Even god uses stone tablets, Miss Malone."
April smiled. She started to look around the tent. Smith ran his hand along the monolith.
"The meadow at night is too convenient," Smith said. "If they were real Martians, I'd think they'd do this in broad daylight, in the president's garden no less." He lowered his voice. "I think Nelson is on the up and up, but I'm not so sure I buy the idea that this was just dropped into place by a man in a Martian suit."
April was looking at the grass. "Would you need proof of that?"
"Yes. Some kind of physical evidence. But I don't see what." He reached his fingers up to touch the top of the monolith.
"Like a deep footprint, perhaps? Proving that the Martian carried it?"
"Which we won't find, because he didn't."
"Oh really, Smith?" April lifted the hem of her skirt and knelt down by a tent pole.
"Yes." Smith wasn't paying attention. He was counting hand spans on the monolith. "I'd think the men in the NYPD would have made note of such a thing."
"How much do you think it weighs?" asked April. She took Smith's umbrella from his arm and shoved it into a hole in the ground near a tent pole.
"Easily seven hundred pounds."
"Plus a two-hundred-pound man equals a hole of at least six inches in this grass?" She looked up.
Smith rapped his fingers on the edge of the monolith as he counted something else in his head. "Yes. At least five. Maybe more depending upon the moisture last night. But I don't ...." He looked up in the air at nothing. "Oh, I see, Miss Malone. Quite clever." Smith turned around and looked at the footprint under the tent pole.
April handed him his umbrella back and stood. She gave him a small grin.
"How interesting." Smith knelt down to look at the hole. "How very interesting." It was a deep print, obviously made by someone carrying something quite heavy.
"Still think it's a hoax?" asked April.
Smith looked up at her. "I must say this lends to the credibility of the claim. But a deep footprint like this could be planted."
"And no one else noticed?"
"Maybe we should ask Sgt. Nelson," said Smith.
Smith held the tent flap open for April to step outside. Sgt. Nelson tipped his hat to her and then looked over at Smith. "Find what you were looking for?"
"I think so." Smith cast a glance over his shoulder at the monolith before the flap fell back down. "Most remarkable."
"I didn't know what to believe myself until I saw the spacecraft. And then when the Martian Ambassador appeared before me, I knew I'd witnessed something special. And there's your proof." He pointed to the tent.
April looked over at two men with a large box camera on a tripod. They were panning it around the North Park. It made a clacking sound.
"Not much use at night," she murmured.
"Depends on the film," said Smith. "Sergeant, so we can put you in the camp that believes this is a genuine alien artifact?"
"Indeed. I can't see how it could be anything else."
"And the ransom doesn't bother you?"
"I don't think it's much different than Cortes or Pizarro."
"Pardon me?" said Smith.
"The conquistadors," replied April, who was still staring at the men with the strange camera.
"Of course. I see your point, sergeant. When they came to a new world, their first reaction was to demand gold and tribute."
"The Greeks and the Romans, too. Some might say it's the civilized thing to do."
"Er, not if you consider killing the natives and burning books civilized," said Smith.
"I hadn't thought of that. Let's hope this encounter goes smoother." Nelson tucked his thumbs into his pockets and stuck out his chest.
"Indeed. Sergeant, I don't suppose you found any more footprints?"
"Footprints?
"Near the back left tent post, Miss ... Miss June found a rather deep footprint that would seem to vindicate what you said you saw. It appears our Martian did indeed carry the monolith and set it into place."
"As if I had any doubt."
"No. I'm sure you don't. But I'm sure there have been some whispers, perhaps?"
"That there has been. But they'll see." Nelson raised an eyebrow and looked skyward.
"What makes you so certain?"
"Because the Martian said so," replied Nelson in a hushed voice.
April turned away from the men with the camera. "He said what?"
"He whispered it to me. Not in that loud voice they could hear all the way to the south end of the park."
"What did he whisper, sergeant?" asked Smith.
"Watch the sky to the south for a sign."
Smith noticed that the sergeant had kept his gaze toward the south end of the park during the entire conversation. He thought it was because he was keeping watch. Now he realized the sergeant was waiting for a return visit. No matter how frightening the previous night's encounter had been, it was the most important event of his life. He'd experienced a kind of euphoria familiar to soldiers in the heat of battle and mountain climbers on the edge of death.
"Well, I hope you keep a careful distance this time," said Smith.
"Are you kidding? I hope they invite me on board. That's why I insisted on standing an extra watch here. I want to make sure I'm here when they come back."
Smith looked up at the dark sky and the twinkling stars. "Fancy a trip to Mars?"
"Indeed," said Nelson. He had a faraway look in his eyes.
"Well, I'm glad the conquest of this continent has done nothing to diminish man's thirst for exploration," replied Smith.
"Pardon me, Professor Hellgood," said April.
Smith was still staring at the stars. "Oh, er, yes?"
"I believe the men with the camera contraption have been taking photographs of you."
"Quite a lot, I imagine. It's a motion-picture camera." Smith looked over at April and then paused. "Of me?"
"Yes, professor. They seem to be very interested in you and only you." She'd been watching as the men trained the camera on Smith.
Smith turned his back to the camera. "Sgt. Nelson, do you know who those men are with the large camera?"
"You mean the Navy folks? Trying out some kind of nighttime celluloid."
"They don't look like Navy men to me. They're dressed all in black like undertakers," said April.
Nelson looked at the men. "I think they're with naval intelligence or some health agency. I can't remember. Lots of folks running around here from funny departments I've never heard of before. Are they friends of yours, professor?"
"Likely rivals from another university. You know how that can be." Smith gave him a sheepish grin while trying to find something interesting to look at in the seams of the tent. "I think we'll be going now. Miss ... Miss June, care to take a walk toward the north lake?" Smith held out his elbow.
April gave the sergeant a polite smile and then followed Smith around the tent and away from the men in black.
"Are they following us?" asked Smith.
April held her hand up to her mouth to cough to the side and looked backward. "They're picking up the camera and following us. Are they trouble?"
"The worst kind," said Smith. "They have a habit of showing up in places where unusual things have taken place."
"Well, so do you."
"Yes, but I try to help. Let's keep walking and see how long they follow us for." Smith glanced down at his heavy rocket umbrella. Using it would attract more attention than he wanted.
They walked farther into the meadow. April held his arm tightly. They could make out the outlines of the trees and some of their surroundings, but it was still quite moody at night. She was amused by the fact that Smith had no idea how improper it looked to anyone as he escorted her into the dark corner of the park. She was about to suggest they go toward a more lighted area when something caught her eye.
"Are they still watching us?" asked Smith.
"No. I think they've lost interest." April was looking behind them.
"Well, that's good."
"No. It's not. Smith, the southern sky is glowing green!"
"What?" Smith turned around as the southern end of the city glowed bright green.
"What on earth?" asked April as she turned to Smith.
A man came running down the meadow, shouting at the top of his lungs. "The Martians have set the Statue of Liberty on fire! The Martians have set it on fire!"
"Well, this is odd," said Smith as he broke out into a run.
Thousands of people crowded the grass around Battery Park at the south end of Manhattan to look on in shock at the burning statue. Normally all but invisible at night, save the faint glow of the torch, the dull copper Statue of Liberty was enshrouded in green flames that lit up the night sky.
Emerald flames flickered around the monument like a ghostly visage out in the bay.
Smith held out his hand and helped April down from the hired carriage so they could get a closer look. People crowded to the edge of the seawall and were only held back from being pushed into the chilly water by a thick metal chain. To the left, several officials were standing on the now-defunct Castle Clinton emigration building, trying to get a better look from above.
"Martians," people whispered with certainty. Some of them looked to the sky for a sign of a spacecraft.
Smith found a stone wall to stand on and helped April up. Although the statue was quite a distance away, it was unmistakable. Its outline was magnified by the eerie flame and the smoke.
Two fire boats could be seen at either end of the island trying to spray water onto the conflagration. Their steam-powered hoses could barely make it halfway up the pedestal, let alone reach the statue.
"What does this mean?" asked April. She touched a gloved knuckle to her chin.
Smith looked around at the crowd. He saw two policemen whispering to each other. "It's a warning," he decided.
"A warning of what?"
"Our Martians want the powers that be to know that they're real. They want them to take this space ray seriously. I'm sure in a few hours we're going to get another message."
"Saying what?"
"Probably making an even larger threat. This is supposed to be a small example, to frighten us."
"Well, it's working," said April. She saw the concerned faces all around them. People had come from all over the city to stare at the sight. They had no idea yet about the mention of the Martian space ray. She was certain it was only a matter of time before it was leaked out. She could only imagine the kind of panic that would create.
"Up until now, we had a very elaborate hoax, the full force of it witnessed by one man. Now we have this public spectacle. People are already in fear and don't know why yet. They read the account of the Martian and are now drawing their own conclusions." Smith turned away from the blazing monument.
"Will they be able to put it out?" asked April.
"I should think it will burn itself out soon enough. It's a parlor stunt, really. Just a very large parlor stunt. It'll probably speed up the oxidation process, though."
"Is that bad?"
"Only if you have something against the color green."
April noticed that Smith's attention was elsewhere. "What are you looking at?"
"Oh, nothing. Just wondering." His eyes turned to the sky. "Our Martians are quite the showmen." Hundreds more people were cramming into the park and onto the ferry dock to get a look at the statue. "I get the feeling that they wouldn't want to miss this." He looked at the different faces in the crowd, hoping to see something, maybe a look of pride.
"You still think it's a charade? Even after the footprint and this?"
"Yes. Quite so. I'm just concerned with how big of a hoax this is."
April tried to see if anyone stood out. Most of the people wore heavy working-class coats. A few uptown residents were getting out of carriages, attracted to the spectacle despite the late hour. "Do you think he's here? The Martian Ambassador?"
"Or the emperor. I know I wouldn't want to miss a show like this."
High above the crowd, the Martian Emperor watched the city staring in awe at the inferno he'd created. The light from the fire cast a green pallor on their frightened faces. For all their pretense of sophistication, he'd cowered them with the simplest of technologies of all: fire. In time, he hoped that at least some of them would understand the significance of the feat and see the futility in trying to resist a superior intellect. The gold tribute was just a start, an acknowledgment that they understood that they'd been outmatched. He was confident that after a few more demonstrations the world governments would be ready to surrender to his will and welcome his rule. Those that wouldn't would be brought to heel by the others and forced to submit to his dominion.
President Benjamin Harrison looked at the telegraph cable that had been placed on his desk. His secretary of state, James Blaine, was still sitting in the chair across from him.
"It's that New York business," said Harrison. "That statue is on fire. Green fire. They think it may be that cosmic ray." He was still trying to process the information, as if saying it aloud would make it easier to comprehend.
Blaine shook his head. "They can't be serious. Don't tell me they're believing the pap they put in their own papers."
Harrison pushed the telegraph to the other man. "Elkins sent a few men to investigate. I asked Roosevelt to have a look, just in case a foreign power is involved."
"I'd check on the whereabouts of PT Barnum, too."
"I believe he's still dead," said Harrison.
"Better check the grave."
"You don't hold much on the Martian story?" Harrison watched the man's reaction.
"I don't even think it's worth your attention. When I was a newspaperman, we would just laugh ourselves hoarse making up tall tales to fill the blank spaces. This is amateur yellow."
"And now this green fire?"
"I'll believe it when this man from space walks up to me and says hello. And even then I'd ask him who he voted for before I gave him the time of day," said Blaine in his grumbly voice.
The phone sitting on the desk rang in its cradle. Harrison picked up the handset and put it to his ear, trying not to touch it to his skin. He was still too nervous to touch the light switches in the White House for fear of electrocution. He'd begrudgingly had the telephone placed on his desk as a sign of modernity.
"Yes," shouted Harrison and waited for the voice of the switchboard operator.
"THIS IS THE MARTIAN EMPEROR." The voice sounded mechanical and even more distant than voices normally sounded on the device. "BY NOW YOU'VE BEEN MADE AWARE OF A SMALL DEMONSTRATION OF OUR SPACE RAY. YOU HAVE FOUR DAYS TO RAISE THE MARTIAN FLAG, CEASE ALL MILITARY ACTIONS AND PAY OUR TRIBUTE."
"Now hold on," said Harrison. He cast a look at Blaine.
Blaine moved his chair closer to the desk to more clearly hear the sound coming out of the speaker.
"END OF TRANSMISSION." The other end of the line made a series of clicks.
"Miss Fenwick?" Harrison called to the White House dispatcher.
"Yes, Mr. President?"
"Where did that call originate?"
There was a long pause as she pulled cables in and out of sockets. Finally she came back on the line. "It didn't appear to come from anywhere."
Harrison set the handset back in the cradle and looked across the desk at his secretary of state. "Could it be a ploy by a foreign power?"
"If it is, it's an act of war. I know the British are still a bit unsettled about the Canadian business. But this is so beyond the pale."
Harrison turned to look out the window at the dark sky. "The world is moving fast. Electricity everywhere. Shopkeepers installing telephones. A fellow sat right where you're sitting a few months ago and played back the sound of my own voice from a clever contraption. I've heard Edison and others talk about the wireless transmission of voice. Automobiles." He waved at the phone and shrugged. "Countless men are trying to conquer flight."
"That will take a hundred years," said Blaine.
"Will it? We used men in balloons as spotters in the war."
"But heavier than air? An automobile can scarcely make it from one side of town to another without sputtering out. An aircraft? Not in my lifetime."
"Perhaps not. But what if the Greeks had discovered the combustion engine or the telegraph? Would we be arguing now about British claim to minerals on the moon? What would we have achieved in the two millennia henceforth? Imagine two great races, one on Mars, one on Earth. One spark, one leap of the imagination and the other jumps ahead. While we clobbered each other over the heads with wooden clubs in the primeval forests of Europeans, were our Martian counterparts building railroads, lighter-than-air travel, mastering electricity? To think, you and I wouldn't be in this office, in this great country, if it hadn't been the happenstance of a few exceptional individuals in Jefferson, Franklin and Washington. You might be a correspondent for the London Times and I a barrister arguing over land contracts."
"So it's Martians, is it?" Blaine managed a small grin. "All it took was one telephone call? Am I to open up negotiations?"
"No. Of course not. I just think that it's important that two old men like ourselves make certain that we don't become too recalcitrant in our ways."
"So what is our reaction to be?"
"When faced with a problem such as this, I often ask myself what one of my wiser predecessors would have done. In this case, Jefferson. He held the sciences very dear. I say we maintain a cautious approach but keep an open mind."
"And what of the demands?"
"I'll leave it to our secretary of war to tell me when I need to take this as more then a hoax. I've also got Roosevelt in New York digging his nose into things."
"Roosevelt? I wouldn't be surprised if he was halfway to Mars to launch a counter invasion by now."
"Pity the Martians," said Harrison. The telephone call had unsettled him. He still wasn't quite sure what to believe. The one thing he was certain of was the distant Martian voice had unnerved him more than he was letting Blaine know.
Smith and April found a cable car still running and took it uptown toward the sidetrack near Lexington where his secret train was sitting. In the distance, fire bells could be heard as horse-drawn pumps raced to different parts of the city. Constables and firemen were standing on corners keeping watch in case the mysterious green fire that had engulfed the Statue of Liberty spread. Their car passed two blocks from City Hall; several pump trucks were already parked in front.
"Quite a commotion," said April.
"Quite a distraction, too," replied Smith. He looked along the rooftops of the buildings as they passed. A few dark silhouettes were visible against the night sky. The green fire was already fading.
"I don't want to sound the fool. But what if it was Martians? Earlier you said Martians didn't look anything like the illustration. What did you mean?"
"Oh, nothing. Just a guess, that's all. In answer to your question, if it is the Martians, then we'd better pay up."
"How would we know?" asked April.
"I was thinking about that. If we operate under the assumption that it's a few earthmen masquerading as Martians, then we need to look for the evidence of that."
April watched as two young boys ran across the street, laughing as they chased each other. "Yes, but suppose they are hoaxers of some sort. We just saw what they did to the Statue of Liberty. What if they could do that to the whole city? An entire continent?"
"I don't. I don't believe there is a space ray, Miss Malone. I believe their weapon is fear. They're using deception to accomplish that. And by the look of things, quite well. If they are humans playing Martian make-believe, then we know that fighting them is a different matter than fighting the genuine thing."
"And if they're genuine?" asked April.
"I have contingencies for that." Smith's voice trailed off. "Some things are best left unsaid. Right now we need to focus on the facts. That begins with the physical evidence."
"Other than the monolith, what is there?"
Smith tilted his hat to the south end of the island. "Lady Liberty. If that green fire was the result of some genuinely alien technology, then that would support the Martian hypothesis. If we inspect it and find the physical evidence I suspect, then we know it's more likely a terrestrial stunt."
They got off the cable car and walked to the alley that led to the sidetrack. Hidden between several warehouses, the train was in the middle of the city, yet accessible only through a metal gate on either end. Smith walked up to the car second from the rear and stepped onto the back. He pulled a key from his trouser pocket and unlocked the door. He looked over at April and thought for a moment.
"This may take me a few hours." He gazed up at the night sky. "Perhaps you'd like to read some magazines?"
"What are you going to do?"
"Inspect the statue."
April stared at the rail car. "From inside there?"
"Don't be ludicrous, Miss Malone. Of course not. I have an alternative means of transportation inside of here. I hesitated to use it, but I think the circumstances call for it."
"Let me come," said April. She had no idea what was inside there and her stomach felt butterflies at the thought of another rocket-propelled umbrella ride, but her curiosity drove her.
"Er, well." Smith scratched his chin. "It's not the safest mode of travel, and you're dressed altogether wrong for it."
"I have a pair of riding bloomers in my valise I brought on board. I shall change into them."
Smith had no response. April darted off to the passenger car to get changed. He stepped inside and started turning a series of switches. Mechanical arms opened the roof of the car to the night sky. He turned several valves, and gas cylinders began to hiss.
April returned a few minutes later and peered into the doorway to the car. Inside was what looked like an eclipsed boat or gondola. She looked up and saw the large gas bag inflating over the top of the car.
"Oh my, that's large," she said.
"I've built bigger, but it will do." Smith gestured to several large cylinders along the walls. "I use a rare gas. I collect it near vents in the earth. Much safer than hydrogen. Not quite the lifting capacity but close enough."
"You mean helium?"
"Well, yes, Miss Malone. That's right. I suppose you do have a mind for details like that." He gave her a smile.
"I didn't know that existed on earth in any quantity." She remembered reading about it in one of the many, many random items that came across her desk.
"It does, if you know where to find it. But let's keep that our little secret."
"I've been thinking about the green fire. You think it's chemical? Boric acid, perhaps?"
Smith turned away from checking the exterior of the gondola. "Well done, Miss Malone. That's how the jugglers and magicians make their green fire. A bit of boric acid and some wood spirits. Nasty to smell."
April walked around the gondola. Ten feet long and half the width of the rail car, there were windows all along the sides and a very large curved one on the front. She reached out and touched the material. It didn't feel like glass. It almost gave a bit as she pressed it with her fingertips.
Smith stepped inside and smiled at her through the window. "It's a kind of celluloid. Noncombustible. Very lightweight. Every ounce counts."
April suppressed a smile. Smith could have protested her coming along by pointing out that she added weight to the craft, and then she realized that he probably wanted to show it off to her but was too timid to be direct about it. Whatever his amnesia, she was relieved to see he still wanted to show her his amazing toys.
She stepped back to look at the whole contraption. "How do you control it?"
"Barely." Smith climbed out of the cabin and swung an armature out from the side partway before it ran into the wall of the rail car. "Once we clear the carriage, one of these on either side will extend and the propellers will spin. For up and down movement, we can use the force of the propellers or the central gas bag. It's heated by an element and makes us slightly positively buoyant. In an emergency, we have a spare helium cylinder on board. Still want to come along?" He gave her a maniacal grin.
"More than ever," said April. She was terrified of the contraption but wanted desperately to see what it looked like from the air. Dirigibles and other airships were over a century old, but no one had managed to make a practical one yet, other than for exhibitions. Smith's looked far more advanced than any she'd ever seen.
Smith held the rear door open for her. There were two seats, one in the front and one slightly elevated to the back. She took the rearmost seat. Smith squeezed past and sat down in front of her.
"Please use the lap belt, Miss Malone."
"Pardon?"
"The strap on the seat. Wrap it around your waist and clip it to the other side."
She looked down and saw a canvas strap. It was the kind of thing you'd find in an amusement ride to keep you from falling out. She belted it across her waist.
Smith turned a gauge and the hiss of the gas flowing into the balloons stopped. April was awed by the variety of gauges and controls before him. It didn't look like a hastily put together machine. She wondered how Smith found the time to do all that. She already knew he was quite older than he looked, much older, but she couldn't see one man doing all the things he'd done even in several lifetimes.
"That's quite an array of controls," said April, hoping he'd explain some of them to her.
"Overkill, really. I've simplified things as much as possible. Maybe if we get a chance, I'll let you give it a whirl."
"Oh, I couldn't," she lied. She was already paying close attention to the knobs and dials as he turned them.
"It's quite simple. Pull back on this lever between my legs to go up. Push forward to go down. Squeeze to go faster and turn it to the left or to the right."
"Did you build all of this yourself?"
"Oh no. I don't have the time for it. I've engaged machinists all around the world to work on my devices. Once upon a time, I used to build everything myself. But then, time became so precious." His voice trailed off.
"Are you worried about people stealing your secrets?"
"Secrets?" Smith shook his head. "People have enough trouble using the ideas that are in plain sight. They rarely trouble with the ones that are a little more obscure. Take the incandescent light, for example. That's an idea that's been around for over a hundred years. I even saw ... never mind. My point is that all the elements were there. What it needed was a man like Edison to come along and say this is important, its time is now."
"What about this? This seems far more advanced than any other dirigible I've ever heard of. The military applications alone."
"It's a toy. I used everyone else's best ideas with a few improvements of my own. In a few years, maybe a decade from now, we'll have more exciting modes of transportation."
"Like what?"
"Engines like the one I use here to power the battery are getting smaller and lighter. I think they'll make a lot of things practical we'd never considered before."
Smith flipped a switch and an electric light illuminated the instrument panel. "Ready, Miss Malone? Once I release the lever, the ascent is going to be quite dramatic."
"Ready, Smith." She gripped the edge of her seat.
Smith pulled the lever and they shot into the air. April watched as they emerged from the railroad car into the alley. The buildings quickly fell below them. She felt a strange sensation in her stomach but ignored it. She was too amazed by the sight of the city from the air at night. Electric lights and gaslamps lined the streets in every direction. Lanterns on carriages moved back and forth. The entire city appeared as if it were one giant intricate machine, a sum so much greater than its parts. She wondered if this was how the Martians saw things, too. Everything so small, so inconsequential.
Staring at the back of Smith's head, she tried to imagine what he saw and thought as he looked out the window. He was just as much a mystery to her as the Martians.
Smith banked the craft to the right so they could follow Broadway all the way down the island toward the Battery and then Bedloe's Island where the statue was located. April marveled at the sight. Her last experience aloft had been accompanied by the sound of a noisy umbrella rocket. This, on the other hand, was rather quiet. The electric motors that turned the propellers made only a soft whining sound. She could hear the wind as it blew past the cabin, giving it a gentle rocking sound. Horse hooves echoed up from the streets along with the sound of a trolley car rumbling across the street.
"I could go to sleep up here," she said. The lights of the city were like their own field of stars.
"I find it rather exhilarating myself," said Smith.
"No, I mean it's so comfortable."
"Yes. Yes it is. I quite like these craft."
"You have others?"
"Yes, this is the smallest one. The most inconspicuous. It's a dull gray color. People on the ground aren't likely to notice anything if they were to look up. But they rarely do."
"Perhaps, but they're not usually under the threat of an attack from Mars," said April.
"Well put. I'm keeping her at a high altitude to avoid attracting any attention."
"Do you think our Martians use a vehicle like this?"
"I would think so. One that's dramatically dressed up a bit. The sergeant said it was made of metal, but I suspect a bit of painted silk made to look like metal would achieve the same result. The process I used for my silk could be easily modified to give it a more metallic appearance. You could even paint on rivets and seams to make it look like it was built by a machinist. That's part of what bothers me about the Martians. Both the ambassador and his craft look exactly like what you'd expect the author of a penny-dreadful to describe. They're very much our idea of what a Martian should look like. I would think they'd look nothing like that at all. I'd also be sad to discover that they're capable of traveling millions of miles but still build their ships like blacksmiths with rivets and seams. Even I can weld metal with an electric arc."
"You're disappointed in the Martians? That's why you really think it's a hoax, isn't it? I kept wondering why you were so resistant to the idea." April had thought Smith would have been in awe.
"Well, yes, in part. Logic and reason tell me it's not what we're supposed to believe. But emotion does play a part. What a sad collection of individuals would they be if they traveled all this distance to shake us down like some kind of imperialist bully? We have so much more to offer them than a few paltry pieces of gold."
The airship passed over the Battery at the southern end of Manhattan. The crowd had already thinned out considerably once the blaze had gone out. Out beyond, the dim glow of the statue's torch, the only visible marker it had at night when it wasn't surrounded in green flames, was extinguished. As they got closer, they could see lanterns moved about the island as men searched for clues.
"I was hoping it would be a little less crowded," said Smith. There were at least several dozen men on the island and a half-dozen boats either docked or anchored around the perimeter.
"Is it safe?" asked April. She felt vulnerable as the gondola buffeted in the wind.
"From what? We're up in the sky. Nothing can get us here."
Smith brought the airship into a wide arc around the statue, still keeping them a hundred feet above the top. The face came into view. Illuminated only by the stars and the moon, her features still proudly looked out to the rest of the world.
"She doesn't look damaged," said April. There was a fine coating of some dark material but no physical damage.
"Nothing major. Copper has a higher melting temperature than the compound they used."
"Assuming they used a compound. What if you don't find anything?" April felt guilty, but part of her wanted this to be more than clever tricksters.
"Then it's time for another theory." Smith unfastened his lap belt and stood up. "I'll need you to take the controls."
"Me?"
"This isn't a sightseeing adventure, Miss Malone," said Smith as the face of the Statue of Liberty drifted directly into view behind him.
"No, of course not." April slid into the pilot seat and fastened the belt. "What do I do?"
"Just sit there for now. I've adjusted the motors to try to keep us at this position. There's a compass that will correct if we drift to one side or another. A gyro will compensate."
"Why do you need me then?" April tried to make sense of the gauges.
"In case it doesn't work." Smith stepped to the rear of the cabin and fastened a harness around his body. He clipped it to an overhead wench.
April looked over her shoulder. "What are you going to do?"
Smith tapped a pouch he'd slung over his shoulder. "Get us a sample of the residue." He opened the back door and a cold wind filled the cabin. The gondola began to rock. "Hold her steady, Miss Malone."
"Aren't you frightened?" She tried to ignore the height and the cold.
"Terrified." Smith jumped out the back of the craft and fell out of sight.
April leaned over the window but couldn't see him below. He'd last positioned the craft several dozen feet above the crown. She guessed he was near the top of the head or the spikes.
Thirty feet below the airship, Smith swung in the breeze next to the spikes of the crown. A dark ash covered the statue. He tried to reach out with a sample brush but the wind kept pushing him away. The familiar scent of a chemical reaction was carried on the breeze, but he wanted to be certain.
Above him, the primitive autopilot did its best to keep the dirigible in position. A gust of wind pushed the craft away and Smith with it. He could hear the motors spin faster as the airspeed sensor tried to compensate. Smith vaguely remembered not having adjusted them since the last time he tried out his craft. The pitch increased and the craft accelerated over the top of the statue, pulling Smith.
The rope swung wildly and threw him toward the left ear. Smith brought his legs to his chest to brace for impact. He hit the lower earlobe with a crash. The statue made a sound like a gong and his knees felt like splinters. His legs took most of the impact, but he was still disoriented.
The aircraft continued to move forward. The edge of the rope went over the top of the crown and began pulling Smith toward the top. He yanked on the rope, hoping the mechanical pilot would stop the motion, but to no avail. In a few more feet, he'd fly clear of the statue.
To his left was one of the arched windows that went around the crown below the spikes. Smith reached his hands out and tried to grab hold of the edge. His fingers could feel the metal still warm from the blaze. He kept hold and tried to keep from sliding over the top of her head. The propellers of the dirigible fought against him. The rope kept pulling him up.
Smith pushed his knees under the top of the arch. A gust of wind pushed the airship back, giving him a moment of slack. Smith reached out with his arms and grabbed either edge of the arch and pushed his feet against the underside. The airship began to pull him back over the top. This time he stretched out his legs and used his thighs to push against the motors. It worked, but he was now upside down with his feet at the top of the arch and his head near the bottom. The harness dug into his waist. For a moment, he feared it might slip off his legs in his upside-down position. He spread his thighs apart to keep that from happening.
His leather pouch smacked him in the face and began to slide off his shoulders. He reached out with his left hand and grasped the strap before it fell below. Using his teeth to grip it, he reached inside and grabbed a sample brush to wipe on the surface of the statue. Cold wind froze his cheeks. For a moment, he felt guilty for leaving the back door open. He hoped Miss Malone wasn't too chilly.
He remarked to himself that it was quite a lot of effort to prove something he already suspected. But the delight of finding out he could be wrong was what excited him. He ran the brush along the soot until the white bristles were completely dark. He was about to slip it into the pouch when he heard someone shout below.
"Look! It's a giant bat!"
"A Martian bat is attacking the statue!" said another voice.
Smith looked from side to side for the bat. He wondered how such a large creature could manage to fly in the thin Martian atmosphere. The disappointment sank in as he realized they were talking about him. Upside down, hanging from under the Statue of Liberty's crown, jacket flapping in the wind -- he knew this couldn't come to any good. Searchlights began to scan the sky and the statue. A moment later, he heard the sound of what had to be a cannon go off and he began to fall.
April sat at the controls but wasn't quite sure what she was supposed to do while Smith dangled below. The propellers would spin faster and adjust their position every time a breeze drifted them away from the statue. She had no idea what Smith was doing. The rope leading down from the wench out the open back door would slide from side to side and occasionally make straining sounds.
She leaned back and looked at the lights of the harbors across the bay in New Jersey and Long Island. The only sound she could hear was the wind and the propellers. Occasionally the mechanical pilot would make a clicking adjustment as it tried to adjust the dirigible's position. The first sign of any trouble was when a bright light from below illuminated the interior of the cabin. As it flickered across April's face, she knew something was wrong. She turned toward the back of the cabin and looked at the rope and bit her lip. Should she activate the wench and pull Smith up? She was afraid to leave the controls, as helpless as she felt at them.
He hadn't showed her what lever controlled that. Other than his stick, he hadn't actually explained any of the gauges and dials. The search light illuminated the cabin again. She reached for the buckle of the lap belt to unfasten it. She wanted to shout down to Smith for instructions. As her hand touched the clasp, there was a loud bang and the sound of fabric ripping.
The craft began to turn to the side. April fell out of the chair and landed against the bulkhead. Her face was pressed up against the side window. For the first time that night, she experienced vertigo as she saw the ground below and the lights flashing up toward her. The ground was getting closer. They were falling.
She tried to move her arm, but her shoulder was bruised from the impact and still tingling. She knew it was more shock than anything else and forced the pain out of her mind. She pushed up against the side wall. The gondola began to shift again, and she was thrown to the other side. She reached out and grabbed the back of the chair to arrest her fall. Her hands held it tightly. She could see the face of the statue move past the cockpit as she fell. What now?
Smith felt the harness dig into his chest as he was jerked to a stop mid-air. It hurt immensely, but he was relieved that he was no longer falling. April must have regained control of the craft, he thought. When he saw the dirigible falling off to his side, he made a face. His mind searched for an explanation. Why was it below him? For a fleeting second he wondered if he'd been caught in some kind of Martian magnetic beam. But then he remembered there weren't any Martians. He looked up and saw the frightening explanation.
The defaulting dirigible had descended off to the side and had passed one of the huge spikes in the crown. Smith's tether was being pulled up and over it like a pulley. The metal structure was fast moving toward him as he was pulled up.
He twisted his body so his head wouldn't be smashed into the underside. He held his hands out and braced himself for impact. Smith stiffened his body and stuck out his chest like a diver.
The harness reached the bottom of the pylon and made a clank as metal hit metal. He prayed that the clasp didn't come undone. He slid past the side and over the top. He tried to grasp it to arrest his fall and perhaps stop the descent of the balloon, but it had lost too much buoyancy. There was no way he could stop it.
Smith's fingers slipped and he was bounced over the top like a trout on a fish ladder. He could feel the impact in his chest and stomach. He arched his back and prepared himself for the worst part. His fingers tried to grasp the top edge in a last-ditch effort, to no avail. The rope jerked him over the edge and into the air.
He was now falling head first toward the ground. The dirigible was descending slowly relatively to him to the side. Smith passed it on the way down and saw the rather shocked expression of April in the pilot seat as she pressed her face up against the glass. He could see her green eyes in the light of the control panel. Strangely, it made him feel relaxed.
Why was that fool smiling when he flew past? April put the question out of her mind and pulled at the stick. They were still several hundred feet from the ground. The propellers may not stop them from falling, but she at least hoped they could lessen the impact.
When Smith flew past the window, she realized that she needed to make sure the contraption didn't fall down on top of him. She was reasonably certain she could manage the impact in the gondola but doubted he could out in the open, especially if the gondola landed on him.
The motors began to whir as she pulled backward on the stick. There was a jerk, and the craft dropped as Smith reached the end of his tether. The craft's nose pointed toward the sky. April looked out the back of the gondola and could see the ground. Smith's body dangled into view for a moment.
"More speed, Miss Malone," shouted Smith.
Relieved that he hadn't snapped his neck, she turned to the control panel and searched for anything that would stop their rapid descent. Her fingers found the autopilot control. She hesitated for a split second and then turned it off. She rationalized that there was some kind of governor that was keeping the propellers from spinning at their maximum.
She yanked the stick backward again and the motors spun faster. They were still falling but not as rapidly before. The statue's face loomed over the main window, almost chastising her. April's mother had warned her about her curiosity. She'd been told it wasn't proper for a young woman to go gallivanting off like she was prone to doing. Never could her mother imagine her in a situation like this. She'd told her almost nothing of Smith, much less the adventure beneath the streets of Boston with the giant squid-like creature. Now this.
April shook her head and held the stick back as far as possible and braced for impact. Cold wind rushed in through the open rear hatch, heightening the sense of falling.
Smith felt like he was going to snap in half when the harness yanked into him a second time. He had to admit the free fall was quite interesting; it was the stopping that wasn't. From prior experiences, he knew the most dangerous part was making certain that your neck didn't get tangled in the ropes. If that happened, even a modest drop could prove fatal. Fortunately, he'd managed to keep himself clear of the rope.
He looked to the ground. Several dozen men had gathered in a wide circle underneath him. Two of them had spotlights aimed up at him and the craft. Miss Malone had managed to switch off the autopilot and was making something of a controlled descent. Smith was quite relieved that they both would most likely walk away if they could survive the mob. All of the men appeared armed and angry.
Twenty feet above the crowd, Smith shouted down to them, "Please put away your weapons, gentlemen. There's a reasonable explanation for all of this."
With stone faces, they kept their guns pointed at him.
His feet touched the grass near the base. The men kept their distance. Smith smiled until he realized they were looking up. The gondola was still falling directly over him.
He jumped to the side as it hit the ground where he'd been standing. The bag began to sag. Within seconds it had partially deflated and completely covered Smith and the gondola like a blanket.
Under the huge shroud, he could see April through the window.
"Kill the engine!" shouted Smith.
April nodded and shut the whole contraption down. The propellers stopped spinning and avoided ripping into the sides of the bag. Underneath the bag, it looked like they were in a darkened tent. April climbed out of the cabin and pushed the bag over her to give her headroom.
"I didn't touch anything!" she said.
"I know you didn't, Miss Malone. If you hadn't been at the controls I'd be dead by now."
"We may still be yet. They looked angry."
"Especially the one that shot at us." Smith glanced around the underside of the bag. "We could try to escape, I suppose."
"We're on an island, Smith."
"Right. I guess we just have to convince them we're not Martians if we want to survive this." Smith gave her a weak smile and then held out his arm for her. He pushed their way through the collapsed air bag. It made hissing noises at them as they moved underneath it and the gas squeezed out.
They reached the edge of the bag and yanked it over their heads. Thirty men with bewildered expressions looked back at them. Firemen wielding axes and policemen holding guns and clubs surrounded them.
"We mean you no harm!" said Smith.
The crowd tensed, frightened by his voice. Several guns were cocked.
Smith was confused. Clearly they could see he was no Martian bat, just an ordinary earthling with a flying machine.
"What's wrong with ... oh my!" squeaked April. "What's wrong with our voices?" she said in high-pitched voice.
"Helium," squeaked Smith. He put a hand to his mouth as if he could catch the strange sounds before they reached the other men.
The men stared back at them in confusion.
"Seriously, gentlemen," said an unnaturally high-pitched Smith. "We're earthlings just like you." He tried to smile, but the sound of his voice defeated him.
A man began to push his way through the crowd. April and Smith could only see his presence from the rather large rifle barrel poking over the top of the other men's heads. He finally reached the front and pointed the elephant gun at Smith's chest. Smoke was still streaming out of the barrel. This was the man who had shot them down from the sky.
The man spit out his cigar. "Schmitty?" he exclaimed.
"Teddy?" squeaked Smith as recognition slammed into his brain.
He raised his elephant gun and turned to the crowd. "It's all right, everyone. I know this man. I'm reasonably sure he's not our Martian." In a lower voice he grumbled, "Right?"
"Of course. We're only here to help." Smith's voice began to squeak less.
"Then god save us all," said Theodore Roosevelt.
"This man is an aeronautical expert I asked to come help us out with this," Roosevelt explained to the fire chief and police captain.
"Then why'd you shoot him with your cannon?" asked the police captain in an exaggerated brogue.
"Because I wasn't expecting him to show up here."
"Sorry about that. I decided to use the fastest means possible." Smith waved to the sagging dirigible. "Still a few kinks to work out. Thanks to my pilot's quick reactions." Smith gestured to April. "Er, Theodore Roosevelt, may I present Miss April Malone."
April held out her hand and Roosevelt gave it a polite kiss. The police captain and fire chief nodded and then wandered off to look at Smith's craft.
Roosevelt leaned on the barrel of his rifle. "Maybe a little warning next time. I almost shot you, thinking maybe the fools were right and you were some kind of Martian bat."
"Yes. My apologies. I didn't expect anyone would see us, least of all someone as well armed as you." Smith gave Roosevelt's large rifle a nervous glance.
"How else do you shoot a Martian?" asked Roosevelt in a serious tone.
"Good point."
"What's with the contraption?" asked Roosevelt. He nodded to the fallen craft.
"I wanted to get a closer look at the statue. It seemed like a good idea at the time," said Smith. He gave April a thin smile.
Roosevelt just shook his head.
Smith reached into his pouch and pulled out his sample brush. He stuck his other hand inside and pulled out a small liquid vial and pushed the brush inside. He gave it a shake and then held it by the light of a lantern set on the ground by their feet.
"Boric acid," said Roosevelt. He tapped the butt of his rifle to the edge of the collapsed bag. "I could have saved you a lot of trouble."
"Where's the fun it that?" Smith tried to hide his disappointment. "So they know it's a hoax? Not some space ray?"
Roosevelt shook his head. "All it means is that there could be a chemical component to the weapon. Until we know what a space ray is supposed to be, it could mean some kind of Martian flame-thrower that covers you with green fire. Try convincing the mayor or anybody else here that's not a serious threat."
"I see your point." Smith looked up at the statue. "How seriously are they taking it?"
"Very. But the upside of your little stunt is that I think they'll begin to take seriously my suggestion that we're dealing with a very clever man and not a Martian."
"Glad I could help." Smith scratched his scalp. He couldn't bring himself to make eye contact with April.
"I'm sorry I had to shoot you down. We have a telephone out at Oyster Bay. You could have called." He looked at the fallen airship. "Can you fix it?"
Smith turned around. "I think so. Happens all the time. I've got a kit to patch it up inside and some extra cylinders." He noticed several police and fire officials were still milling around the crashed vehicle. "I guess everyone is taking this pretty seriously."
"And how. Our Martian has created quite a stir. Two hours ago, while this was lighting up the night sky, he placed a telephone call to the president and repeated his demands."
"Oh, my. Did he take it seriously?" asked April.
"Not until his telephone switchboard caught on fire from calls from the British prime minister, the president of France and all of Congress. It seems it was a party call. They're all furious that they weren't told about the inscription on the monolith."
"What will he do about that?" Smith dropped the end of the air bag he was holding on to.
"There's going to be a conference tomorrow here in New York. The secretary of war is coming, as are the heads of the Army and Navy. Several ambassadors, as well. A few professors from the various universities are going to speak on the subject."
"What then?" asked Smith.
"If they think there's a rational reason to be concerned, then they might just try to pay off the bribe."
"But not end all wars?"
"There's not much to do right now." Roosevelt placed his rifle across the crook of his arm and stepped back to get a better view of the collapsed craft. "You haven't been flying this around the Baltics recently?"
"No, not that I can recall."
Roosevelt stepped closer and spoke in a hushed tone. "I've got sources that have said they've seen reports of flying craft over parts of Russia and even Finland."
"Dirigibles and balloons?" asked Smith.
Roosevelt shook his head. "Metal craft, like the one people claimed they saw last night over Central Park. Heavier than air."
Smith shook his head. "None of my design. At least none that I can account for."
April listened closely but kept quiet. She wondered how many flying machines Smith had his hand in. She'd also been thinking about the Martian's appearance but decided to wait until he finished talking to Roosevelt.
"It was just a thought. I'm looking for explanations to bring to the table tomorrow, before they do anything rash. There's talk about just paying up the ransom and seeing what happens. A few Treasury men are convinced that's the best course of action, treat it like a ransom and then follow the money."
"That's fine if you're trying to track down some garden-variety thug, but this individual is thinking several steps ahead. Obviously he's got international connections. Once that ransom is paid, he could vanish to any corner of the earth. Or sky, for that matter."
"You don't think we could track it?" asked Roosevelt. He pulled a cigar from his pocket, looked at the half-inflated gas bag and put it away.
"Don't worry. You can smoke to your heart's content around this. I don't doubt anyone's devotion. The trouble you have is that you don't have anything capable of tracking him if he takes to the air. You need some kind of air force."
"Don't I?" Roosevelt lit his cigar and waved to the grounded aircraft. "What if we were to add some firepower to this contraption. Like a few more rifles like this or a Gatling gun? That'd be some air power."
Smith felt his heart sink. "I was hoping aviation could be a civil pursuit and not another weapon for war."
"Too late on that, Schmitty. The Chinese were strapping fellows to kites to drop bombs a thousand years ago. Half the world's navies are trying to build craft like yours."
"I know. I know. I helped design more than I care to think about."
"Besides, it looks like somebody using a get-up more advanced than yours is already using it to wage war, or at least anarchy. How do you suppose he managed to assault our Lady Liberty?"
"Probably poured the liquid from the sky, I suppose, which means his craft is large enough to carry several hundred gallons of liquid. More than adequate to ferret away with two thousand pounds of gold bullion. But slowly."
Roosevelt puffed out a cloud of smoke and shifted his rifle. "You know me, Schmitty, I look for a way to avoid a conflict, but once I know it's coming, I leave nothing on the table. I go right for the nose. If it's Martians or not, we're in for a fight. And the moment I read that headline, I knew the one man in the world I wanted to have at my back was you. Perhaps a slightly older version of you, but I won't ask questions. This is a modern kind of conflict and you're the most modern man I know. So my question to you is this, are you just curious? Or are you ready to go to war with these Martian fakers?"
Smith looked over at April. She raised an eyebrow. "I guess I'm in."
"How about you, miss?"
"Me?"
"I don't know much about Schmitty other than he has a habit of showing up in the oddest places and he keeps exceptional company. The way you landed that contraption was impressive. I would have jumped for it myself."
"I guess I'm still hoping they're really Martians with peaceful intent."
"So are we all." He tapped his nose. "But I think the three of us know it's not the case."
"I hope the men in the meeting tomorrow don't come to any rash conclusions. I'd be fine if they decided it was time to end all wars, of course," said Smith.
"That'd be a nice dream. But how long would that last? Peace under what terms? Lots of peace in a graveyard. I just hope the buffoons don't come up with any harebrained schemes. Although ...."
Smith waited for him to complete the thought.
Roosevelt pondered his feet. "Think you could manage some kind of demonstration? I think it's important that we remind them that you deal with hoaxers differently than the genuine artifact."
"Such as?"
"Surprise me. You already did once tonight." Roosevelt tipped his hat to April and then wandered off.
"You and me both." Smith turned to April. "He's a very peculiar man."
"That says a lot coming from you."
"In another age, he'd be a king or an emperor." Smith started to push back the air bag toward the gondola. "I've got a repair kit inside here. I think we can get this patched up soon enough and be on our way."
"What about the meeting tomorrow? Can you convince them it's a hoax?"
"Maybe. I hope to give them good reason to think so, at least."
April and Smith sat in the back of the hall at New York University while one speaker after another stood on stage and bloviated on the possibility of extraterrestrial life and whether they should cave to the alleged Martian's demands. Smith fidgeted, frustrated by the logic of some of the speakers, most of whom were university professors, philosophers and clergy. Each one was given ten minutes to make his argument in front of an array of government officials. All of them went over the allotted time. None of them had anything particularly insightful to say.
They all spoke in theoreticals; none of them talked about the physical evidence or lack thereof.
The auditorium was standing room only; press and photographers crowded the aisles. The contents of the Martian demands had made headlines the night before and now the whole world was debating what to do. Photographs of the obelisk lined one side of the hall along with illustrations of what witnesses had seen.
"They're missing the point," said Smith after an astronomer spoke about the inevitability of intelligent life in the universe. "The question shouldn't be whether or not intelligent life exists, it should be whether or not it decided to drop in on Central Park and throw out demands like a gangster."
"So you do believe in the possibility of life on other planets?" asked April.
"Of course." Smith turned to her. His eyes were still red from the late night they'd spent planning a small "demonstration." He'd had eight cups of coffee before the meeting and devoured twice his usual allotment of powdered doughnuts and eclairs.
"You just seemed so skeptical." April reached out to wipe a blotch of powdered sugar from his lapel. Roosevelt had ushered them in minutes before the discussion began. While April had a chance to freshen up, Smith was making last-minute refinements and still wore the clothing he had on when their dirigible crashed.
"Believing in one thing is not the same as believing in another." Smith lowered his voice when a woman in front of him gave him a stern look. "Like god, for example. Believing in a god isn't necessarily the same as believing in a god that intervenes in daily life. That's where most religions differ. They all believe in some kind of supernatural being, but they can't agree in what he does for a living. Does he kill children with typhoid? Or does he try to stop some other malevolent being from doing so? The details are everything. Just like our Martian. Let's just assume there are aliens out there. Proving otherwise is impossible and won't tell us how to deal with the immediate situation." He waved his hand at the speaker on the stage. "It's all so ... so academic."
"What should we do?" asked April.
"I don't know. I'm worried this Martian might be more clever then I gave him credit for." Smith sat up as another speaker took the stage and used the projection lantern to show a map of Europe and Russia on the overhead screen.
"As you can see, there have been numerous sightings along the Prussian border," the speaker continued. "Most of these sightings would indicate that there was an interest from the other-worlders in this region here," the speaker said as he waved his hands at a mountainous region in western Russia.
"Oh my," said Smith as he saw where the speaker was pointing.
"What's the matter?"
"I know that place. The speaker is an idiot. He thinks aliens are interested in that area for gold reserves or whatever. If he knew what was really there, then he'd know we weren't dealing with aliens."
"What do you mean?" asked April. She looked at the map and tried to make sense of the Prussian towns and cities.
"What's ..." Smith was cut short by a loud voice that filled the auditorium.
"GREETINGS EARTHMEN."
The speaker dropped his pointing stick. People stood up in their seats to see the direction of the voice.
"I AM XYMOX THE 23RD. SUPREME RULER OF THE UNIVERSE. AND I HAVE COME TO GIVE YOU A WARNING ...."
Purple-tinted smoke began to fill the air at the top of the hall as the lamps flickered and dimmed. Flashes of light came from the cloud that now hung over the audience's heads. People screamed as a form began to appear in the mist. Long tendrils whipped around, and three glowing blues eyes appeared in what looked like a giant head.
"CRIMINALS ARE TRYING TO TRICK YOU. DO NOT BE FOOLED. THEIR SPACE RAY IS A JOKE."
April leaned over and whispered into Smith's ear, "Is that the octopus I bought in Chinatown last night?"
Smith nodded. "I didn't have much time to think of anything else."
"THESE MARTIANS ARE NOTHING MORE THAN EARTHMEN TRYING TO DECEIVE YOU. PAY THEM NOTHING."
A woman screamed when the alien's face became more visible. Another stood up and fainted in the middle of the audience. Smith cynically thought it was a plea for attention. Angry men stood on their chairs and shook their fists at the apparition. Hundreds of people ran for the doors. Smith's face turned white. He didn't expect them to take his demonstration as real.
"Oh no!" Smith stood up. "It's not real! It's just a projection!" Nobody listened to him.
"DO NOT BE MISLEAD BY SIMPLE TRICKS," said the alien.
"He's just an illusion," shouted Smith. People kept running past him.
"I AM JUST AN ILLUSION," echoed the alien.
"It's just a parlor stunt!" Smith stood on his chair and tried to calm the panicked crowd that was fleeing the auditorium.
The onstage speaker crawled out from behind the lectern and tried to make it offstage but kept bumping into chairs.
"I AM NOTHING MORE THAN A PARLOR STUNT," said the image.
The auditorium thinned out. Several hundred people stayed behind, either not fooled by the illusion or too scared to leave. Roosevelt threaded his way toward the back of the auditorium to Smith and April.
"Do I need to ask?" he said with a scowl.
Smith tried to grin.
"I COULD APPEAR AS ANYTHING. EVEN A HARMLESS KITTEN." The octopus with glowing eyes dissolved into a giant kitten.
"Aaaaaaay," screamed a woman as the kitten's phantom paw clawed at the air. She stood up and bolted from the hall. Roosevelt watched her retreat.
Smith sat back down in his chair and put his hands over his face, trying to avoid the pandemonium he'd caused.
Roosevelt looked over at April. "Did you know he was going to do this?"
April, not wanting to make Smith look bad, wasn't prepared to admit that she didn't know he was planning on demonstrating it in such a dramatic fashion. "I don't think we anticipated this reaction."
Roosevelt waved his hands at the hall. Professors were poking sticks at the cloud while policeman tried to shield the gathered politicians. A priest was making an exorcism rite in the corner.
The kitten vanished from overhead and the smoke began to dissipate.
"You!" came a voice from the other end of the hall.
The fire captain who'd been at the Statue of Liberty climbed over several rows of chairs to get to Smith. "You! I recognize you from last night! Are you responsible for this?"
Smith straightened his tie and stood up. "I certainly can't be accountable for people's reactions. Not all of them, at least."
"What did you expect?" demanded the captain. He poked a finger in Smith's direction. "You can't, you can't." He searched for the words. "You can't go shouting 'alien' in a crowded hall!" His white mustache bristled with every word.
"It's my fault," said Roosevelt. "I asked Smith to give a demonstration. He was supposed to be onstage when the light projection occurred, but all of the speakers ran late. The timer went off anyway."
Smith said nothing and just nodded. He wasn't actually scheduled to speak, but Roosevelt's version sounded so much better than the truth.
"I should have all of you arrested!" said the captain.
"And what would that accomplish?" asked Roosevelt.
"It'd keep that menace from causing any more harm." The captain jabbed a finger toward Smith again.
"This man is the only one who has any idea of what's going on here," said Roosevelt.
April put a defensive hand on Smith's shoulder.
The captain squinted his eyes and stared down at Smith. "Maybe too much of an idea. Two times he's caused a commotion. If I see him a third time, I'll put him away myself."
"I'll see to it that there aren't any more mix-ups," said Roosevelt.
The captain stood for a moment, trying to figure out what to do. He looked at April, like men had a habit of doing, and softened. She returned a charming smile.
"I think I flipped the wrong switch," she said as she touched a finger to her lip and gave her most innocent look.
Smith raised his head to speak, but her fingernails clawed into his shoulder.
The captain's face released all its tension. "Well, electricity is dangerous, miss. A young thing like yourself shouldn't be playing with it." He looked down at Smith and scolded him. "Putting a young lady like that in harm's way."
"Oh no, sir," said April, her voice higher than usual. "He gave me strict instructions not to touch it. But I disobeyed. I'm so sorry." She batted her eyes.
The captain gave a weak smile. He gazed around the room. People were calming down and acting embarrassed from their reactions as they realized it was just a stunt. "I guess nobody was hurt. But keep an eye on him, both of you."
"Yes, of course," said Roosevelt. "We're ready at your insistence."
"Lord, I hope not," said the captain. He looked over at April. "Present company excluded." He tipped his hat and walked back down the aisle to talk to some of the other officials.
"I'm sorry," said Smith. He leaned over the seat back in front of him and stared at the floor.
"No, no. I asked you to do a demonstration." Roosevelt waved a cigar at the space where the alien had appeared. "And I forgot who I was dealing with. I should have asked for something more subtle."
"Subtle? Smith?" April raised an eyebrow.
"Good point. At least with you around I know he's got some sense. Maybe next time you tell Miss Malone your plans? Bounce it off a head that's not as high up in the clouds as your own?"
"It's why she's here," said Smith. He looked up at April and smiled.
Roosevelt folded his arms and surveyed the knocked-over chairs and crowd filing back into the hall. "Hell of a demonstration. I'm not sure if it helped or not. I'm going to talk to some of the press boys and explain what it was all about. We can at least count on the newspapermen to get the gist of it. I'm not sure if we changed any of the bureaucrats' minds."
"The last speaker, he made me think of something," said Smith.
"The kook with the European events I mentioned?"
"Yes, that kook. His map of airship sightings, it made me realize something. We've been going about this all wrong."
"How do you mean?" asked Roosevelt.
"We keep trying to prove it's not aliens. But you and I already know this. What we need to do is not look for physical evidence that contradicts that but look for evidence elsewhere that shows that they're human tricksters."
"What's the difference?"
"Remember the map the kook showed? It was of airship sightings in Prussia. I can tell you what was so special about them; they were all centered around an area where I know there's a fissure in the earth that produces helium. Somewhere in Europe someone is building their own lighter-than-air craft in secrecy."
"You think they're connected to our Martians?"
"Maybe, maybe not. Even so, I don't know if that fissure is enough to supply them here. It got me thinking. They'd need a local source of a lighter-than-air gas. But it's not helium. Probably hydrogen. Somewhere on this side of the Atlantic, they're producing hydrogen gas in large quantities to fill their own airship. Find the gas and we might find our Martians."
"How do we go about finding them?"
"Producing hydrogen involves hydrochloric acid. Lots of it. They could produce it in a warehouse or a factory. The best way to do that is using electricity. They might have their own dynamo. We should talk to Edison and Tesla's people about that. We should also look for any burn victims, in case there's been an accident with the acid. It's a messy procedure and difficult to do right. Check some of the out-of-the-way hospitals, the kind of place you go when you don't want questions."
"I think I can get on that. I know the man to talk to."
Smith looked over his shoulder at the sets of eyes that were watching from windows and stoops. Roosevelt had led him to an unsavory part of Hell's Kitchen. Smith had been self-conscious about the suit he was wearing and wanted to dress down to match the working-class residents.
Roosevelt had explained, "I know your usual modus operandi is to disguise yourself like a local, but this is a case where we don't want to pretend we're anyone other than who we are. The key to walking through a part of town like this, dressed as we are, is to look like we know what we're doing. Then the pickpockets and quick thieves will assume that we're connected men."
"Connected to whom?" asked Smith.
"This town is all about graft and corruption. To make that work you need corrupt businessmen and politicians. Everyone here knows where the money flows from. We either want people to assume we're corrupt bureaucrats or businessmen looking to corrupt. Either way, connected."
Roosevelt held open a door to a saloon. Smith stepped inside. Two men wearing butcher's coats covered in blood were drinking down tall glasses of beer. The bartender, an old man in a frayed navy blue sweater, looked at them with his flinty eyes.
"We're here to speak with Mr. Miggs," said Roosevelt.
"He ain't here," barked the bartender with an Irish accent. He gave Roosevelt another look. "On the account he's out trying to find me cousin a job because you took the gov'ment one away from him."
Roosevelt threw two coins on the counter and lit up a cigar. "I'm sure if your cousin was qualified he wouldn't have a problem keeping his job. It's a funny thing, wanting civil servants to know how to read and do arithmetic."
The bartender swiped the coins away and placed two beers on the counter. Roosevelt took a taste of his and then set it back down on the counter. "Looks like someone swiped your beer and replaced it with river water."
The bartender spit on the floor and turned away.
"Excuse me," said Roosevelt.
The bartender kept his back turned and started to wipe down the counter.
Roosevelt turned to Smith and held up his hand. He unbuttoned his jacket and revealed a pistol in a holster. He grabbed the gun by the barrel and pounded it on the bar with the handle.
The bartender turned around to say something sharp but thought twice after he saw the gun in Roosevelt's hand.
Roosevelt delicately placed the gun back in its holster. "Now that I have your attention, we'd like to speak with Boss Miggs."
The bartender jerked his thumb toward a door at the rear of the saloon.
Boss Miggs was sitting at a desk and smoking a pipe while he looked over a ledger. A thin man with receding gray hair, he had the scholarly look of a professor. He quickly closed the ledger and shoved it inside of a drawer when he saw Roosevelt enter the room.
"Aren't you a little far east for elk hunting?" said Miggs in a snide tone.
Immaculately dressed, Boss Miggs looked as clean and polished as any politician Smith had ever seen. Roosevelt had explained that he was one of the operators for the Tammany Hall political machine and the man with the clearest connections to the underworld of New York City.
Roosevelt pulled up a chair and motioned for Smith to sit down. "Still helping your men steal candies from babies?"
"They never know what to do with it in the first place. Mayweather told me you were skulking around. To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit? Is it for a campaign contribution? Are you looking to make another run?"
"I've moved on to bigger rats for now. We're here about the Martian business."
"You and everyone else."
"I'm sure Boss Croker is livid that the Martians didn't cut him in for a slice of the pie," said Roosevelt.
"Who says they didn't?" asked Miggs.
"If they had, your pet mayor would have paid it up by now and given them the deed for Manhattan."
"It worked once."
"I'm here to make sure that it doesn't happen again," said Roosevelt. "My colleague and I are assisting the investigation."
"Which investigation? I've got a half-dozen different chiefs running around town all pointing fingers and asking questions. They've been shaking down the boroughs trying to see if any of the gangs are involved."
"How is your family, by the way?" asked Roosevelt.
"What a card you are. As if any of them had this kind of imagination. Sorry fellows, I've got nothing for you." Miggs leaned back in his chair and stared at a point above their heads.
"But we haven't told you what we're looking for," said Smith.
Miggs lowered his gaze to him. "You're the one with the private train and the airship? If it were me, I'd haul you downtown and be asking you questions."
"That's been discussed," said Roosevelt. "My colleague is only here to help."
"Like I said, I don't think I can be much help, even if I was inclined." Miggs looked at his fingernails.
"What if I told you that your bartender was stealing from you?" said Smith.
Roosevelt turned to him and let out a puff of smoke as if it were a question mark.
"Donovan? Never," said Miggs, but his eyebrow was arched.
"Maybe he's not stealing from you. Maybe it's just from your customers."
"Now wait a second," said Miggs as he sat forward. "I run a clean joint. I own a half-dozen and nobody accuses me of swindling a man out of a drink, except maybe a drunk or two, but that's only to their benefit."
Roosevelt folded his arms and smiled. "Please explain, Schmitty," he said as he turned to Miggs for a moment. "It's always fun seeing his mind work."
"I heard about the stunt he pulled at the university," replied Miggs. "Quite the showman."
"You've got two beer taps, right?" said Smith.
"Yes. And before you get started, I check them both. There's no way Donovan is spiking the line on those."
"Have you ever pulled both at the same time? It'd be a simple job to put in a fitting that fed water into the line only when both were pulled. Maybe just five or ten percent. When Donovan rolls the barrels out to the back, one of his friends comes out and taps the rest when you're not here. Of course, I'm not saying he's doing that."
"Then why are you saying that at all?"
"Because your beer is watered down. And that's what I would do if I were inclined."
Miggs looked over at Roosevelt.
Roosevelt shrugged. "He's a clever man. There's an easy way to find out." He jerked his thumb toward the saloon.
Miggs rapped his fingers on his desk. "All right." He pulled a key from his pocket and locked his desk drawers. "Not that I don't trust you. Wait here." He got up and walked out of the back office to the front of the bar.
"What's that all about?" asked Roosevelt.
"A hunch." Smith stood up and leaned over Migg's desk. He picked up his address book and flipped through it. "Got a pencil?"
Roosevelt pulled a pencil and pad from his pocket. "I thought you had perfect recall?"
Shouting came from the front of the saloon as Miggs confronted his bartender. Smith and Roosevelt looked toward the door.
"I do, when the amnesia doesn't get in the way." Smith called out several numbers to Roosevelt and then put the address book back on the desk when they heard footsteps coming closer.
Miggs entered and sat back down. He looked at the desk suspiciously for a moment. "Looks like I'm closed for the afternoon, unless one of you men is looking for a job as a barkeep."
"I've done it and didn't much care for the company," said Roosevelt.
"Right under my nose," said Miggs. He shook his head in disgust.
"The ignominy of it all. Right under Ali Baba's nose," quipped Roosevelt in mock disgust.
"Theodore has clever ways of calling people a thief," replied Miggs.
"We're trying to find out if a surgeon or a doctor may have treated any men recently for burns. Or maybe some odd breathing issues?" asked Smith.
"Check the hospitals," said Miggs.
"These people would probably want to avoid the normal hospitals," said Roosevelt. "Like for instance, if a friend of yours had several chinamen working in a laundry, illegally perhaps, and one of them got his ponytail caught up in the machine but the boss didn't want the police snooping around on the account that some of the people working there were underage or maybe not quite there voluntarily."
"I don't know what you're talking about," said Miggs.
"Nothing? Not even after our favor?" asked Roosevelt.
Miggs shook his head. "That's not the way it works. And when did you start horse-trading favors?"
"I'm merely trying to help."
"Well, fair is fair. If I find anything out, I'll let you know. What would these burns have to do with the Martian business, anyhow? There wasn't anyone near the statue when it ignited."
"And how did you come by that piece of information?" asked Roosevelt.
"A little bird told me that the men working there got a warning to get clear a few minutes before."
"A warning? Like the kind that tells union workers when to stay home to avoid a fire?"
Miggs smiled. "Let's just say we're even."
Roosevelt turned to Smith and nodded. "Well, we'll be off then. I'm relieved to know the Martians are appropriately connected to the underworld of New York City."
"I didn't say anything to that effect. All I said was that they got a warning and everyone has managed to keep it under wraps. We don't know from who or why." Miggs' tone was serious. He sounded almost confused by it, as well.
Smith and Roosevelt tipped their hats and then left the empty bar.
"First, you have to tell me how you knew the bartender's gambit," said Roosevelt as they stepped onto the street.
"Yes, certainly. But I'd also like to check in on Miss Malone and see if she's tracked down any missing dynamos."
Roosevelt and Smith hopped on a cable car heading south toward Chinatown. Of all the addresses they'd written down from Miggs' address book, the name of a Chinese doctor who lived there seemed the most likely. Roosevelt had remarked that the Chinese Tongs were so secretive the police had barely made a crack at them and tended to give them wide berth as long as they kept their activities away from uptown whites.
"That's a hell of a way to look at policing. What about the immigrants who are being victimized by them?" asked Smith.
The trolley's bell rang as they rolled through an intersection. "I believe America is for all Americans, Smith. It's my hope to see to it that becomes the case. Until then, we have to choose our battles. Now, you've ignored my question, how did you know the beer tap was rigged?"
"It's a silly thing. I'm not much of a drinker, really."
"Neither am I. Depending upon the company."
"It was two things. The front door to the saloon had a peculiar gap. Just wide enough to allow in a thin ray of light. When the bartender set down two mugs for the butchers, I noticed the way the light looked when it traveled through their glasses. A kind of beer 'spectroscopy.' Against the far wall, theirs looked different than ours. It was an interesting sight. I didn't think much of it. But it was when he filled our glasses I saw that the pressure from the tap actually increased slightly."
"How could you tell that?"
Smith looked at him oddly for a moment. "They filled faster."
"You time these things?" Roosevelt tapped his cigar ashes over the railing of the streetcar.
"Not consciously. I tend to be a little manic about certain details, I suppose."
"Yes, I suppose," muttered Roosevelt.
The two got off the streetcar and started walking west through the densely packed streets of The Bend. Sidewalks were filled with peddlers standing behind crates of produce. Shops poured out onto the sidewalks with towers of boots, shoes, dresses and working-class clothes. The commerce didn't stop at the street. A cobbler in a tie and rolled-up sleeves stood on a second-story fire escape and hammered nails while shouting down to people placing orders into a wooden bucket a small boy hauled up and down by a rope. Every square inch was wall-to-wall humanity.
Smith looked at the faces of the men and women as they passed by -- Irish, Italian and Eastern Europeans along with just about every other ethnicity he could identify. He saw a few children threading their way through the crowd who looked mulatto.
To their right, men sat on chairs outside a crowded German beer hall and watched them pass by.
"Factory workers," said Roosevelt. "Either coming from or going to a shift."
"Let's hope they're coming from."
"You should see the beer dives." Roosevelt waved a cigar toward a dark alley. "That's where the tramps go at night. For a few cents, they drink drugged-up beer and sleep on the tables in dark basements. Wretched, wretched places. The floor so thick in filth, it's difficult enough to walk in there, let alone face up to the pitiful condition of the people in there. The police do raids on them from time to time. Two weeks ago they found a two-year-old babe sleeping in the corner on a pile of straw."
Smith shook his head. The city was full of everything; it was an inspiring testament to man's ambition and a stark reminder of his animal past.
They passed several more blocks and came to the streets known as Chinatown. Pigtailed men in cotton and silk pajamas moved through the streets into shops and businesses with Chinese lettering. The street peddlers sold produce, chickens and strange roots and vegetables that looked like they'd make for horrible eating or excellent medicines. None of the peddlers paid any attention to Smith or Roosevelt. They only seemed interested in selling to other chinamen.
Smith glanced around the next street. Something seemed peculiar to him.
"You noticed?" asked Roosevelt.
Smith nodded. He waited for a cart filled impossibly high with chairs to pass between them. "Where are the Chinese women?" He could only recall seeing one or two.
"There aren't many to speak of. The few that have Chinese wives keep them squirreled way. The rest tend to have what they refer to as white wives."
"Prostitutes?" asked Smith.
"A byproduct of the opium den. More than a few young women have found their way into them and found themselves in yellow bondage. Try as the reformers might, they can't seem to liberate them from the foul habit. They keep clawing their way back into their clutches. It's a powerful drug."
"Some of my favorite philosophers are Chinese," said Smith. He looked around to try to make sense of the sterile atmosphere. Compared with The Bend and Mulberry Street, it had all the joy of a prison yard.
"These are the castoffs. Even then, most of them are hardworking. The fools would amount to something if they didn't like gambling away their money more than making it." He stopped and looked up at an address. "Here we go. Just as I thought. It looks like our doctor doesn't keep a normal place of business."
The stairs led down to a basement door. An Asian man with a brimmed hat stood in front of the doorway, reading a Chinese newspaper. He glanced up at Smith and Roosevelt as they started down the stairs. He stepped toward the middle of the door to block them. He let out a small angry grunt. Roosevelt smiled and gently pushed the man aside.
He relented and moved out of the way and went back to his paper. They entered a long hallway that was filled with smoke. Two overhead gaslamps lit the passage.
"Remember, it's always important to look like your business is more important than theirs," said Roosevelt.
Smith followed him through the hallway into a room where men sat at tables, gambling over squares with piles of buttons in the middle. Coins and bills were scattered around. All of the men looked up at them as they stepped into the room. The ones acting as dealers protectively covered the bets.
"Fan-tan," whispered Roosevelt. "A simple game. You bet on how many buttons or whatever will be left in the pile after the dealer pulls them away four at a time."
"I've played a few rounds," said Smith.
"Whereabouts?"
"Singapore, Taipei, a few other places."
"Of course. Of course." Roosevelt looked at all of the faces staring back at them. "Pardon us, gentlemen. We'll leave you to your amusements in a moment. We're looking for Doctor Qi. Could any of you help us find him?"
The faces stared back in silence. Out of the corner of his eye, Smith saw a young boy, no more than twelve, look to the opposite corner of the room where a man with a long white mustache was seated at a table.
"Doctor Qi!" shouted Smith in his most cheery voice. "I have a sick friend who could use your help." He fumbled a wad of bills from his pocket and made his way toward the doctor.
A loud commotion came from the back of the room and a table was overturned. Porcelain bowls and metal coins clinked on the floor. Roosevelt and Smith turned to look at the disruption. When they turned back to the table where the doctor had been sitting, he was gone.
"What the devil?" said Roosevelt. He searched the back of the room for any sign of the man. There was no doorway or possible exit. "He vanished!"
April Malone was looking at the overhead fan when the tall woman in gray skirts called her into the office. Everything in the Edison building was electric. She'd never seen so many incandescent light bulbs in one room. The entire office was a testament to the uses of electricity. Men in aprons and coats bustled back and forth down the corridors, some of them stopping to give her a glance or tip their eyeshades as they hurried along like the electrons they shuttled around circuits.
If this was the New York office, she could only imagine what things were like at the Menlo Park facility in New Jersey. That was where the great man himself toiled away at his grand experiments that filled the newspapers.
The secretary extended a finger toward April and pointed at a seat for her to sit down in while being interviewed. The woman's beady eyes scrutinized her application as April sat quietly and looked at the office around her. The entire back wall was lined with filing cabinets. She wondered for a moment if Edison might be planning an electrical alternative to them. Of course, back in Smith's Boston office, somewhere underneath was a system that would probably put to shame anything Edison had ever dreamed.
While Smith and Roosevelt had gone out in search of acid-burned men who may or may not have existed at all, April had decided to see if there was anything to Smith's idea of a dynamo being put to use secretly somewhere. She'd searched the papers and found no mention of such a device gone missing for several months back. She did, however, find a curious mention of a large amount of copper wire being stolen from the yard in back of the Edison facility three weeks prior.
When April found the want ad in the newspaper for a secretary at the new Edison/General Electric corporation, she decided it was as good an excuse as any to have a look around.
The newspaper account was scant on details and names. She'd made an inquiry at the local police station for a copy of the police report but was told it was pulled from the file. The sergeant at the desk had told her that "Edison's men" were going to handle it as corporate espionage. She had the sneaking suspicion that meant retribution against the party they thought might have been responsible.
"Can you use a typewriter?" asked the woman.
"Well enough," replied April. She tried to make eye contact with the woman while looking suitably demure.
"How's your technical spelling?"
"I think adequate."
The woman narrowed her gaze. "Electricity?"
"Pardon me?" asked April.
"Can you spell that for me?"
"E-L-E-C-T-R-I-C-I-T-Y." April was confused by the rather pedestrian request.
The woman penciled something on her application. "Fluoroscopy?"
"F-L-U-O-R-O-S-C-O-P-Y."
The woman gave her a cold look and scribbled something down. April had the feeling it wasn't a positive reaction. She was certain she'd spelled it correctly.
The woman set her pencil down and looked up. "Platinocyanide?"
April bit her lip and thought for a moment. "P-L-A-T-I-N-O-C-Y-A-N-I-D-E."
"Do you know what that is, Miss Rhymer?" asked the woman, using April's fake name.
"I believe a salt of some kind," said April.
"Care to tell me how you came by this knowledge, Miss Rhymer? Most of the girls that come in here can only adequately spell their own names. And according to this, you've never even been to a finishing college or a secretarial school."
"I read a lot?" April left out that she also had an uncanny ability of remembering things.
"I don't recall those words being the staple of the Saturday Evening Post. You should know that we treat corporate espionage very seriously here."
That's it, thought April. They thought she was a spy for another company. Technically that was correct but not the kind of spy the woman thought. She needed to think of something to cover.
"I used to do transcription for Professor Milton at M.I.T. He's a physicist."
The woman looked back down at the application. "I don't see that mentioned here. Why not?"
"It wasn't an official position." April looked away for a moment, feigning embarrassment. "My mother was his housekeeper. There was a disagreement."
The woman nodded.
April let her arrive at whatever conclusion she wanted. The more sordid and embarrassing, the more convincing.
"That makes more sense." The woman sat back and looked April over from head to toe. "You're far too vibrant for our Serbian friend."
April assumed she meant Tesla and took that as a kind of compliment.
"I'll have Mr. Tiller come speak with you. It may be a few moments."
Miss Wincher looked up as two men walked down the hall. April glanced over her shoulder and saw the men from the park who had chased down Smith and her. She observed her interviewer making a face.
"Undertakers?" asked April. She tried not to stare out the door.
Miss Wincher lowered her voice. "In a way. Government men. They also do some work with Mr. Edison."
April nodded. She wanted to inquire without being obvious about it. "I imagine a man as important as Mr. Edison has a lot of government secrets."
"Quite. But those men are more involved with procurements and the like. You know Mr. Edison experimented with over a quarter-million materials before he found the one for the electric light bulb."
April kept her mouth shut to avoid pointing out that if he'd ever bothered to read a scientific paper on the subject, he could have saved himself the trouble. The filament problem had been solved twenty years prior. The real challenge was the vacuum, which Edison already solved.
"Meteors and the like. Odds and ends," added Wincher.
"Pardon me?"
Miss Wincher leaned across the table. "You don't know where the next great discovery might come from. A new rubber tree or some special rock. It's of vital industrial and strategic importance. They're going to be with Mr. Tiller for a moment. Probably to do with this Martian nonsense. Goodness, we've had enough of that already around here. The government fellows have been asking our researchers all sorts of questions about missing equipment."
This was new to April. She wondered if there was a connection to the copper spindle disappearing. "You mean after the Central Park commotion?"
Wincher shook her head. "Before that. Men love to tell tall tales, especially when they've been drinking on the job. Nonsense."
April's ears perked up. The filing cabinets behind the woman had to contain the records of the men who'd worked there when the copper spindles were stolen. April tried to think of a way to get access to them.
"Miss Wincher, I have an embarrassing confession."
The woman raised an eyebrow.
April looked at her hands in her lap. "I'm a fine typist and a technical speller, but I've not the faintest idea on how to do filing. I know I should have mentioned that. I've done some volunteering at the public library, but they never even let me touch the card stacks."
"There's nothing to it," said the woman.
"Do you think you might be able to show me?"
"Doctor Qi no here," said a man near Roosevelt's elbow. "You go now."
Smith ignored him and walked to the back of the room. Angry eyes followed him. The rear wall was covered in grime and layers of wallpaper. The floor was dirty except for a narrow rectangle.
"Trap door," said Smith. He reached down to open it.
"Leave it. I don't want us getting stabbed in the dark," replied Roosevelt.
Smith stood back up and walked back to the center of the room, disappointed that he didn't get to explore the labyrinth of tunnels underneath the streets.
"I can ask the local police to keep an eye out for him."
Smith tapped his finger to his chin. "I have another idea." He motioned toward the door.
They both tipped their hats to the indifferent chinamen and left the illicit gambling hall and stepped back into the bright street.
"Let's hear it," said Roosevelt.
"Doctor Qi certainly didn't want to speak to us."
"That much was apparent to me."
"I'd think he'd normally be willing to at least entertain someone waving around cash. I looked at his side of the Fan-Tan table and he was in such a hurry to leave he left behind his winnings."
"I've never known a chinaman or any other to do that."
"I suppose it's for two reasons. Either one of the men there was an accomplice, someone he trusted to take care of them. Or he was in such a fright he didn't care. Both of them lead me to a conclusion."
Roosevelt leaned against a railing and smiled. "Explain."
"First, I believe I know where the hypothetical men are who've been burned by the hydrochloric acid used to make the hydrogen gas. Both hypotheses lead to the same conclusion."
"And what tells you this?" asked Roosevelt.
"The man sitting near Doctor Qi's winnings reeked of opium."
"Nearly all of the men down their did."
"True enough. But this man had neither the glassy-eyed look or any of the other symptoms of the opium addict."
"So he works in an opium den," finished Roosevelt.
Smith nodded. He pointed to the basement. "Then there's the obvious. Why does this doctor have a gambling hall as his address and not a clinic or a remedy shop?" He pointed to several signs covered in Chinese symbols. "I see several of them here. He doesn't practice out of any of them. There's a kind of particular patient he treats. The kind you don't want talking to anyone else. Men who got injured pulling robberies or who are on the run. Men you keep doped up in an opium den so they don't talk to anyone while they either heal or die from their wounds. Acid burns are particularly painful." Smith waved his finger in the air and then pointed toward the ground. "Tell the police captain to do a search of the opium dens in this block and I'll bet you a cigar he'll find our hypothetical acid-burned men."
"I'll take you up on that offer, Smith. The police station is two blocks over. I can get a squad of men here in twenty minutes," said Roosevelt. He started walking down the street.
"Er, I was speaking theoretically," said Smith as he ran to catch up with him.
"Well, aren't you supposed to test theories?" Roosevelt was grinning from ear to ear. "Let's put your theory to the test."
Smith looked over at a telegraph pole covered in signs and notices written in Chinese. "Yes, well, I'll stay here and look for clues. Maybe our Martian contracted for labor from here."
"Don't want to face the police with that theory?"
"I'd prefer to sneak in during the still of night and look, to be honest. I'm quite practiced in the art of ninjutsu."
"You can't do everything by yourself, Smith. Besides, these coppers are dying to do something other than stare at the sky."
"I'll wait here. After my stunt this morning, I want to avoid the authorities as much as possible."
"Good point. I'll be back in a moment." Roosevelt walked around the corner.
Smith turned back to the pole and read the different notices nailed to it. He tried to ignore the fact that a hundred pairs of eyes were staring back at him from around the street.
Fifteen minutes later, Roosevelt and the captain of the police station marched back into Chinatown with a column of two dozen uniformed officers behind him. Smith was speechless.
"What's the matter, Schmitty? Didn't think I could pull it off?" said Roosevelt as he exhaled a triumphant puff of smoke into the air.
"I was afraid you would. You're the kind of man that can talk others into following you into the mouth of hell if you wanted."
"Just point me in the direction." Roosevelt nodded to the captain.
The policemen split into two groups and stormed down the street and down various back alleys.
Roosevelt leaned against the telegraph pole. "This is old hat for them. They know all the dens by heart. Usually they only raid them when things get out of hand or someone fails to grease the right palm. Since this is just a search, the opium den operators won't make too much of a fuss."
"What did you tell the captain?"
"Just that we were following down a hunch that some men may have been burned igniting the Statue of Liberty."
"An acid burn would look different than that kind of burn," said Smith.
Roosevelt shook his head. "I'm pretty sure these crushers can't tell the difference." He looked at the pole. It was covered with thousands of slips of paper with Chinese characters.
"See anything interesting?"
Smith yanked a sheet off and handed it to him. "It says there's going to be a raid on the Green Lotus Fan-Tan parlor next Tuesday. Not much of a secret?"
"That's how this city works."
They watched as policemen ran down one alley and then came back another. Occasionally a few dozen chinamen would come running out of a doorway across the street after the police went into a building opposite. Some even came climbing down fire escapes.
"It's a maze down there," said Roosevelt. "Another city. You've got entire gangs living in the sewers."
A police lieutenant came running out of a doorway and up to Roosevelt. "Captain wants you to see this."
"What is it?" asked Roosevelt as he and Smith followed the young man.
"We found two men all bandaged up like you said. Doped out of their minds."
They walked down a narrow alley. Cats boxed up in crates howled at them as they walked by. Smith flipped open a catch on several as he walked by, setting them free. Roosevelt shook his head as the animals ran as fast as they could to get away.
"This way," the lieutenant said as he pointed toward an even more narrow corridor between two buildings. "One of the men keeps saying something in another language."
"What?" asked Roosevelt.
The young lieutenant held open a door. "Sgt. Balky, his mother was Turkish, I think. He says the man is saying 'fear' over and over again."
They walked down a flight of stairs into a basement underneath a five-story tenement building. Two police officers were standing at the doorway. It took a moment for their eyes to adjust to the dark interior.
The room was filled with row after row of bunk beds. Sparse candles provided illumination. A haze of incense and human stench filled the air. Men and women lying on cots, too doped up to notice, lulled about and covered their eyes from the light coming in through the open doors.
They came to a bunk surrounded by policemen. On it lay a man whose head and hands were covered in bandages. The captain leaned against the bed, shaking his head.
"We found another one in the next bed. Neither one can talk, except this one, barely. But he seems to have passed out from the exertion."
Yellow-tinged gauze covered the man's face. The dressings looked like they hadn't been changed in several days. Completely covered in a ball of bandages, it could be anyone or anything underneath the wrappings.
"Can we have him moved to a proper hospital?" asked Roosevelt.
"I'll see to it," said the captain.
"And have an armed guard put on him and the other. They were sent here so they wouldn't talk. We need to make sure that if they recover no one stops them from telling us what they know. Keep an eye out for Doctor Qi."
"Where is Sgt. Balky?" asked Smith.
"Here," replied a heavyset man from the left side of the bunk.
"You heard the man speak?"
"Yes. It sounded like he was saying 'fear,'" said the sergeant.
"Fear? What was the question?"
"I asked him where he was from."
"And he said 'fear'? Are you certain?" Smith tapped his chin for a moment. "Is your mother by any chance Greek?"
Balky looked around at the other policemen. "She spoke a little."
"And that's how you knew the man was saying 'fear'? Because it sounded like a Greek word you remembered?"
Balky nodded.
"Very good, sergeant. But he wasn't telling you he was afraid. He was naming a place. And this was the answer he gave you? Your question was specifically, 'Where are you from?'"
Balky looked at his captain and then nodded. "I think so."
"Sergeant," Smith's voice was sharp, "this is absolutely critical. You asked him where he was from and this is what he told you?"
"Yes." He stood up and stuck out his chest.
"Well, that is peculiar," said Smith. He sat down on the edge of the bed and looked down at the mystery man.
"Well? What is it, Schmitty?" asked Roosevelt. All the policemen were looking at him expectantly.
Smith shook his head. "I guess honesty and openness is the only approach. The word Sgt. Balky heard was Greek, all right. But the man lying here wasn't telling us he was afraid. When asked where he was from, he told the sergeant the ancient Greek word for fear. That word is 'phobos.' Isn't that correct?"
Balky nodded. "Yes. That's what it sounded like."
"Phobos, gentleman, besides being an old Greek word for fear, is also the name of one of the Martian moons." Smith shook his head as he gazed at the wrapped body and wondered what was underneath the bloody bandages. "When asked where he was from, this man said the largest moon orbiting Mars. Hardly the kind of jape a man in this much pain would make. Don't you think?"
Smith had expected the discovery of the acid-burned men to shed some light onto the mystery. Instead, he found one more clue pointing to the Martian explanation.
April walked up the stairs of the tenement building, carefully dodging the children who ran up and down like it was a vertical playground. Dressed in patched-up but well-mended and cleaned clothes, they were obviously the children of parents who had little money but at least cared enough to do their best by them. On her way to the building, she'd passed many other children not so nearly well looked after. Scruffy-looking boys and girls who looked like they'd never seen a bath. Some of them with gaunt faces. Others with angry expressions in their eyes, even as they went about their play.
She reached the top of the landing and walked down the corridor to the apartment she'd been searching for. A small boy of perhaps six was playing a game outside the door involving a tin soldier and a handful of buttons and bottle caps.
April had noted the address when Miss Wincher had given her a quick education on the art of filing. April pretended to know nothing of filing and asked several innocent questions before going to the "T" drawer in the employment section and pulling out a file of recent terminations. She memorized two names and addresses at a glance while she made eye contact with Wincher. Both belonged to men who had been fired the day after the copper spindle went missing.
The first man had moved on from the boarding house he'd been staying at and left no forwarding address. Her last hope of salvaging anything from her ruse was behind the door in front of her.
She'd felt a little guilty after departing the office. Despite her guarded, crone-like exterior, Miss Wincher had actually been cordial and polite. After April got the information, she departed as quickly as she could to avoid the men dressed in black, lest they make a connection between her and Smith. Wincher had been sorry to see her leave and told her to come back the next day. April decided to keep that option open in case they needed more information.
She knocked on the door to the apartment. The little boy looked up.
"Are you here to see papa about a job?" His eyes looked hopeful. There were traces of dried tears at the corners of his cheeks.
"I'm just a friend," said April.
The boy nodded his head and then went back to his play. The door opened and a petite woman with brown hair pulled back in a bun looked up at April. A toddler clutched at her skirt.
"I'm here to speak with Mr. Garret," said April.
The room was dark except for light streaming in from a rip in the window shade. The woman had an exacerbated look about her face. A bed and a table with a thin slice of bread and a piece of cheese was visible to the side.
April's heart sank. It was obvious that the family had fallen on hard times since the man lost his job. She could see his shadow in the corner sitting in a chair, staring back at the doorway.
"You work for Edison?" asked the man.
"No. I've come to ask you about the night the copper spindle was stolen."
"You're not the police. I'm not interested in talking."
April patted her coat pocket. "I'm prepared to pay you two dollars for your story."
"And look like a fool in the newspaper? Not interested." The man's silhouette turned from the door.
The small woman looked back at her husband. There was a hurt look in her eyes.
"Lots of people are looking foolish. Besides, it can be anonymous," said April.
"Anonymous?" The man thought about it for a moment. "All right. All right. Martha, let the young lady in. Find her a chair."
The woman brought a chair from the kitchen. April smiled and sat down. She did her best not to stare at the squalid conditions and embarrass the people any further. Yellow tape held wallpaper up on one side. The furniture looked like it had been found in the street. The man sat up in his chair. It made a wooden creak as he sat up. He was wearing a woolen cap and a vest that had been buttoned up wrong. He looked like he was on the sober side of a several-day drunk. He was unshaven; his eyes were bloodshot.
At first he seemed like a bit of a lout the way he commanded his wife, but April caught a slight nod from him to the woman after she brought the chair over. She then stood by his side and he reached up and held her hand. There was a tenderness there that both warmed and saddened April.
"Tell me what happened the night the copper spindle went missing," said April.
"One minute it was there. Another it wasn't."
April could tell that a lot more happened in that minute than Garret wanted to admit to.
"Mr. Garret, I don't think you're a fool. Nothing you can tell me would surprise me. You've seen what's been going on these last few days."
Garret nodded. He had the look of a man who was tired of telling his story to deaf ears.
"I think what happened to you is related. It's very important you tell me what you really saw that night. Why did they fire you?"
"Five hundred dollars worth of copper wiring went missing on my watch in the yard. That's why. And all I had was a fool story. Told me I was drunk and covering it up. Said I was on the take. The take! Look around you. Does it look like I'm getting any kind of graft?"
April shook her head.
"It was a foggy night. I looked after the yard in a watch with Vincent. Lots of expensive equipment there. Sometimes deliveries come at night, Menlo or other parts. We open the gates and let them in. That night I was sitting on a stack of crates, looking up in the sky at a bright red star. I thought it was peculiar how bright it was. Then I realized it's getting closer. I holler to Vincent, but he's sleeping behind a pile of crates. I look up and the star is right over us, so bright I'm casting a shadow. I have to hold my hands up to look at it.
"I didn't know what to do. They tell us what to do if the gangs try to bust in and steal a shipment. They don't tell us who to call when a star is falling on your heads. It comes down just over the top of the building. I'm staring up at it, my mouth open like a carp. I don't know what to think. A beam of light shoots down to the ground, like a pillar. Then I see them. I didn't know what they were then. I called them devils. Large red heads. Tall, real tall. But I guess that's how they grow on Mars.
"They walk over to the copper spindle. It's chest high. Weighs several hundred pounds. I can see they're fixing to take it. I manage to shut my mouth and go over to them. I'm so scared. But I know my job. My job is to not let them take anything.
"I walk up to the closest one and shout at him. He just turns to me. You can't tell by the head 'cause it's just round. His shoulders turn to me and he sticks out a hand and hits me in my chest. That's how I got this."
The man opened up his vest and shirt to show April the red scar burned into his skin.
"Oh my," said April.
"They say I did this to myself." The man looked down at the scar. "Why?"
April shook her head. The man didn't seem like the type to fake something like that.
"Next thing I know, I'm waking up and the morning supervisor is kicking me in the ribs, calling me a no-good, lazy drunk. They fired me that day. I offered to speak to the police, but they told me they were going to handle it. Didn't even pay me the rest of my wages. Just like that. All I got is this scar to show for it. Vincent, he headed off. He's not got a family to worry about."
"Did you get a good look at the craft?"
"Burned into my eyeballs." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper and handed it to her.
It was a pencil sketch of a saucer-shaped craft with various embellishments. There was also a drawing of a spaceman.
"May I keep this?" asked April.
The man looked at his wife.
"I'll pay you an extra dollar for it," said April. She pulled the bills from her jacket. It was her entire week's pay.
Garret nodded. "You're very kind." He took the money and handed it to his wife.
April stood up. "Thank you for sharing that with me."
"Which paper will this appear in?" asked the wife.
"I don't know yet. I'm a bit of a freelancer."
The woman looked at the rolled-up bills in her hand. "What happens if you can't sell the story?"
April could tell the woman felt guilty for taking the money. "Oh, don't worry. I always do." She headed for the door and stopped. "Mr. Garret, have you sought work with Tesla's company? They might have a use for a yardman with knowledge like yours."
"No. That's who Edison's people said I was working for. I didn't want to look a crook."
"Well, if they already assume that, then why not?"
Garret nodded.
"And one more thing. I don't know much about the man, but if Tesla himself asks to interview you, be sure to tell him the exact circumstances of your firing. He might be more sympathetic than you think. He's got a peculiar interest. I'd also show him the scar."
April smiled down at the little boy and walked down the flight of stairs. The story and drawing had cost her a week's wages, but she felt it was well spent and would go to a good cause. Of course, the really interesting detail to her wasn't the drawing or the tale. It was the scar on Garret's chest. It was the most damning evidence of all. She'd known it was common for men working on inside jobs to fake injuries so they didn't look culpable. But the scar on his chest was not only an unusual injury, the most outstanding detail of all told April that it had to either be the work of an insane man or the truth.
Why fake an injury from a burning hand. More importantly, why fake a burn mark from a hand with only three fingers?
Smith walked out of the Western Union office with a telegram in hand. The sun was going down and cast long shadows. Roosevelt was watching three workmen wrestling a steel girder onto the fourth floor of a building across the street. A steam-powered crane stood nearby with an angry mechanic slamming his wrench into the mechanical workings without much success.
"Good news?" asked Roosevelt.
Smith shrugged. "I asked Miss Malone to check in by sending an update to this office."
"Charming lady, that Miss Malone."
"This is interesting. Very interesting. She found something quite peculiar." Smith handed the telegram to Roosevelt.
Roosevelt held it up to his spectacles. "Quite interesting." He handed it back to Smith. "Say, you didn't happen to ...."
"Count the fingers on our wounded Phobosians? I think we would have noticed. Besides, you're not really entertaining the idea that these are real Martians?"
"I'm not one for goblin stories. But I've been told a few by men I hold in high regard. There has to be a point where you take the notion seriously," said Roosevelt.
"Do you?" asked Smith.
Roosevelt spat a cigar tip on the ground. "Hogwash. I'm just curious to know what your threshold is. We don't want to be two dunderheads who dismiss everything that flies in the face of our sense of reason."
"So far our most promising leads have been when we chased down evidence of a hoax. We looked for men burned by acid used to make an aircraft and we found them. Miss Malone went looking for our dynamo and found a missing copper spindle."
"But each time we also find a clue suggesting some kind of Martian interference. Either a word or a three-fingered burn," said Roosevelt.
"The burn is easily enough faked. It's the kind of trick I'd use if I was inclined to cruel pranks. As far as Phobos is concerned, well, I don't know what to make of that," said Smith.
They crossed the street and started walking uptown toward the yard Smith had rented out to work on his airship.
"Quite a showman," said Roosevelt after each spent half an hour in their own thoughts.
"Yes. I was thinking the same thing. I keep getting the feeling there's some part to all of this right in front of our noses."
Two men dressed in black were walking toward them with determined expressions. A metal barrel poked out below one of their coats.
"Friends of yours?" asked Roosevelt.
"Nobody whose acquaintance I'd like to meet."
"Say, there's a pretzel stand right down this street. Why don't you go ahead and grab two? The mustard is quite good." Roosevelt nodded to Smith and tapped his jacket pocket where he had his revolver.
"I don't ...."
Roosevelt grabbed him by the shoulders and turned him down the alley. "Just go, Schmitty."
Smith relented and hurried down the alley. If it had been any other man, he wouldn't have let him stand in his stead, but he knew Roosevelt could more than handle his own. He glanced over his shoulder and saw him jog ahead to confront the men nose to nose.
Smith didn't want to waste his friend's distraction, so he hurried down the narrow alley and ran up the next street. He found a dark alcove that gave him a clear view of both sides of the street and backed into it.
A gunshot echoed across the block.
"Damn." Smith shook his head and ran back.
He came to the narrow alley again and started walking back down. Defensively, he held his heavy umbrella in front of his body. A man in a black coat appeared in front of him from around the corner. Smith turned around and found two more men in black coats coming from the other side. It had been a trap.
"Come along, Mr. Smith. The Health Service Department has requested an inspection." The man in the front held up an official-looking green document.
"That's quite all right. I'm feeling fine," said Smith.
"It's not your health we're concerned about," said a man from behind him.
"That's my concern." Smith lifted his umbrella above his head. He was nervous about the close quarters of the alley.
The men knew Smith was trapped. They slowed down their pace as they closed in on him. When he raised the umbrella, they thought it was an odd reaction. The man known as Contral pocketed the document and pulled out a heavy blackjack and slapped it against his palm.
"We can do this unofficially and quite pain-free. Or you can make us go through all the channels and we'll make it much more difficult for you," said Contral.
Smith looked over his shoulder at the men getting closer. His nose got a whiff of formaldehyde and he made a quick decision.
"I really hate bureaucracies," said Smith as he opened his umbrella and twisted the handle.
Sparks and smoke flooded the alley from the ends of the umbrella. Contral and his men shielded their eyes.
"Don't let him get past you!" screamed Contral.
The three of them stretched out their arms to touch the walls on either side and closed in on where they'd last seen Smith. The thick smoke caused them all to cough.
Something pushed against Contral's chest. He slapped down hard with his blackjack and felt it hit a skull. "I've got him!" he hollered as he leaped to the ground and put a knee in the man's chest. He slapped the metal blackjack into the body over and over. "Filthy vermin! Goddamn vermin!"
"Contral!" shouted one of his men a few feet away in the smoke.
"Help me subdue him!" Contral fought with the man as he tried to get up. He slammed the blackjack into the man's ribs. "Destroying our city! Polluting our race!"
"Contral! That's George!" shouted the man standing in front of him.
Contral pulled the blackjack back for another strike and froze. The smoke had cleared enough for him to see the bloody face of the man underneath his boot. He shoved the weapon back in his pocket and pulled the dazed man to his feet.
He panicked for an instant as he saw the condition of his helper. "Good god, George! Look what that fiend Smith did to you." Contral gave the other man a glare to tell him to keep his mouth shut.
Contral stood back and tried to compose himself. George looked confused and still half unconscious. Besides the three of them, the alley was empty. He was certain Smith didn't pass him.
"Did he pass you?" he asked Anderson.
Anderson was still shocked by the beating he'd watched Contral give his partner. "Um, er, no. There's no way he could have got past us."
Contral glowered. "Then where the hell did he go?"
Smith glanced down at the three men from the top of the building and then took off in a run. He gripped his still-warm rocket umbrella under his arm and dived under clotheslines, leaped over rooftop gardens and passed by shacks built on top of the rows of tenement buildings.
While part of his mind was still trying to make sense of the altercation in the alley, he marveled at the ecosystem that existed on top of the buildings of the city. He had little understanding of what was on top of all the buildings he'd passed by walking or in streetcars. Every inch of the city was being used for something, whether it was the sewers underneath or the tar paper roofs overhead.
He leaped across a four-foot gap and came to a standstill when he almost tripped over a row of several hundred flower pots. An old woman in a threadbare gown holding a candle used a dented bean can to water them. Smith knelt down to have a look at a white flower.
"Gardenias?" he asked as he caught his breath.
The woman tilted the can into a pot and sprinkled a small amount of water. "Most people think it's too cold to grow them here. Secret is watering them at night." Her voice had a faint Scottish lilt.
"And you don't overwater them?"
"That's right. Too much water makes the soil too cold. They like a warm blanket just like you and me." She gave him a smile.
Smith watched as the woman went along the rows of flowers and watered each one. It was a distraction for him while he decided what to do next. Instincts told him that the shot he heard was Teddy warning the men off, and the route in the alley had gotten past him, too. Most likely, Roosevelt was on his way back to the train or waiting for Smith near a busier street like Broadway where the men in black coats wouldn't try to snatch him.
"Did you happen to see that business with the green airship?" asked Smith.
The woman looked up from her watering. "I see lots of things up here."
"I'm sure you do."
"Night the Lady Liberty got fire, I saw a balloon pass overhead. Not very big though. Kind of smallish."
"Yes, well I'm sure it gets the job done." Smith coughed to the side.
"I suppose. I was asleep when folks said they saw the other one. Not surprised though. I see lots of peculiar things up here."
The woman's voice was old but certain. Her eyes bore into Smith.
His curiosity was piqued. "What kind of things?"
"Strange things. Saw a bird once as big as a small horse." She pointed toward the corner of the roof. "I saw it perched right there one night. I shooed it away with my broom. I didn't want it snatching one of the babes that play in the street."
"No. Of course not. Big as a horse?"
"More or less. But that was years ago. It doesn't come 'round here no more," she said.
Smith decided to save his questions about that for another time. "Anything else?"
The woman thought for a moment. "The usual, I guess." She pointed to another roof. "There's a young couple that likes to make hay over on that roof some nights." She gave Smith a grin. "I suppose I would if I had a man who was inclined."
Smith ignored the wink. "What about the unusual? Anything else?"
"You mean besides the two suns?" The woman tipped her can into another flower pot.
"Two suns?" asked Smith. "What do you mean?"
The woman tilted her head. "The two suns." Her gnarled finger pointed past Smith's shoulder.
He turned to his left and saw the fading sun glowing orange back at him in the east. He jerked his head to the right and saw the sun sinking in the west. "Well, that is peculiar."
"It only lasts for another minute," said the woman.
Smith looked to the eastern sun and watched as it began to fade and then vanished. Night fell on the city.
"You're the only other person who's seen it," said the woman. "Try telling other people and they think I'm mad."
"You're not mad. You're brilliant and very observant." Wheels began to turn in Smith's head. A giant part of the puzzle started to resolve itself. He looked down at the flowers. "How many will five dollars get me?"
"All of them and more," smiled the woman.
"I'll just stick with the flowers," said Smith.
The woman wrapped a large bouquet for him. She showed him the quickest route to a busy street. He thanked her and then took off uptown across several more rooftops. He found a fire escape and descended back down to the street.
Roosevelt was waiting for him at Chambers and Broadway.
"Flowers for me? I don't think I deserve them."
"I heard the shot. I thought it was the end of you," said Smith.
"One of those louts' guns fired as I shoved him into the bricks. I realized too late there were more of them. I was going to search for you until I saw the others regroup. Looks like you went to work on one of them."
Smith shook his head. "They eat their own."
"Had run-ins with them before?"
"Not these ones. But their kind. Usually they don't work so out in the open."
Roosevelt pulled a wallet from his pocket. "I filched this out of one of their pockets." He handed Smith an identification card and a badge. "Some kind of health commission."
Smith looked at the signatures and seals. "Legitimate?" This worried Smith.
"Or as illegitimate as any other cocked-up two-bit commission in this city. It wouldn't surprise me if they're getting paid by some public agency. Not that that gives them any right to do as they please. But you can get away with murder under the pretext of public health, especially in a city so filled with immigrants and public health problems."
"And a Martian scare."
"There's that. I think they have their eye on you. It's time we took extra precautions. I'll try to clear this up with the mayor and make sure they keep their hands off you."
Mayor Grant laid his cards on the table and took a sip from his brandy snifter. He and his partner had just lost a rubber in a game of whist and were done for the evening. His total loss for the night was six dollars, a small price to pay for the distraction from current events. He was sick of talking about Martians and had made it clear to anybody who tried to broach the subject. The rules of talking shop at the Peacock Club were quite clear, but all the men ever wanted to talk about was business and politics.
The meeting at NYU had been a disaster, even without the interruption from the eccentric man with the phantasmagoria show. When he found out the man was the same one who'd crashed his private dirigible into the Statue of Liberty, he'd been livid. Of course he'd be an acquaintance of Roosevelt's. Probably chomped on cigars with Mark Twain over at the Lotus Club, too, whenever that rogue was in town.
The trouble with the city, Grant had decided, was all of the same reasons it was so interesting. He'd had a mathematician explain to him that not only would New York City be the most populous city in the United States by the end of the century, it would be the largest one ruled by the white man since the days of Rome. It was a sobering thought. There was a reason why the mayorship carried more gravitas than most governorships and why foreign dignitaries knew the two officials in the United States to speak to were the president first and the mayor of New York City a close second.
He'd spoken to the president earlier in the day on the scratchy telephone. "What are you going to do about this Martian situation?" the president had asked.
"What am I going to do?" Grant had answered back. "Unless you're going to open up the gold reserve, there's little I can do."
"Well, deal with it," the president had replied before hanging up.
Deal with it? There wasn't much Grant could do. The Martians were whoever they were, could keep setting off all the fireworks they wanted, but he was in no position to meet their demands. Mayor of the most important city in the world or not, he was still just a mayor.
He mumbled a goodbye to his gaming partners and trudged off to the coat room. His hands in his pockets and eyes staring at the floor, he avoided the rest of the club, lest he have to be asked one more time what he was going to do about this Martian business. Decorum prevented him from using the four-letter gutter response he wanted to use.
As he donned his coat and the valet called for his coach, he wished for a moment that PT Barnum was still among the living, if for no other reason than to get the man's assurance that this was indeed a "humbug." Grant trusted the opinions of others more than himself. Except those idiots who paraded on the stage earlier that day and brayed on and on. For all of that intellectual power, not a common-sense wit about them.
He shrugged and stepped outside and boarded his coach. His driver snapped the reins and the two horses pulled the carriage away from the colonnades of the club. There was a bit of a fog that night. Grant closed the door to avoid the foul smell coming from the bay.
The carriage traveled two blocks and then took the side street so the horses didn't have to watch their steps on the trolley track in the dark. Grant lit a cheroot and puffed away as he tried to think about nothing. He wondered if his sister would still be up. Most likely. She was a delicate sleeper. He'd hoped to hand her off to some eligible man sooner or later so he could finally take his own wife. Grant was the youngest mayor the city had ever seen. In his political ambition, he hadn't stopped to get married. He knew he'd have to remedy that soon or later. It didn't look well to be a bachelor in politics for very long.
His mind ran through the faces of the politically connected young women who might make a suitable wife. When the green glow shot into the carriage, he pulled the shade down as to not be disturbed. Although, for a moment, he was amused by the ghastly specter form the smoke from the cheroot made in the green light.
The carriage came to a stop. Green glow? Grant sat up. The horses began to make a whining sound. There was a bounce as Albert hopped off the driver's bench and walked over to his door.
Grant waited for the tap to come at his window, but it never came. He thought that odd. He opened the door at the sound of footsteps running away from the carriage. Albert's tails followed after him as he retreated under the light of a gaslamp and kept running in the opposite direction.
Grant set foot off the carriage and looked back in the direction his coachman had gone. There was the feeling of acid at his throat when he thought for a moment that this was some kind of assassination. Had he displeased Croker? Were the gangs making a move? He thought those days were behind the city. Nobody murdered politicians in the street anymore. There were far better forms of assassination now, chiefly the press.
He looked down at the green cast on the ground and his memory clicked into place. His shadow shimmered and flickered in the mysterious light. He was too terrified to turn around. All of the Martian business had been just that up until now. It wasn't real. It was just a sea serpent story in the Times. The president, the panic, everything he had to deal with was about the reaction, not the thing itself.
His heart pounded against his sternum. He felt the urge to chase after Albert, but fear locked his knees. Still unwilling to turn around, he stood still.
It was no use. Another shadow grew behind him. It drew closer. He could already tell it was much larger than his own. The shape was ... the shape was inhuman.
A hand grabbed him by the shoulder, and he let out a stifled scream. He saw a searing white light and then passed out.
Frightened witnesses, cowering behind windows, saw three Martian men carry his body into their glowing craft and then ascend back into the sky. Too terrified to say anything, it was an hour before the first police station heard that the mayor of New York had been abducted by the Martians. But it only took twenty minutes after that before the newspapers started planning the morning's headlines. The Martians had taken their first hostage.
Smith opened the gate to the private train yard and held it open for Roosevelt. He saw the light from the main salon car and jogged across the gravel when he saw April's shadow.
"I've made the most interesting discovery," he said as he burst through the door.
April looked down at the bouquet of gardenias and smiled. He tossed them onto a couch and her smile changed to a frown.
"I need a map!" He began digging through a cabinet behind the mechanical train map.
Roosevelt entered and tilted his hat to April. He saw the bouquet on the couch. "Er, Schmitty."
"In a moment, Teddy. I'll tell you everything. Sorry for making you wait." Smith pulled out a map of the Spanish coastline and tossed it aside as he dug through the rolled-up sheets.
Roosevelt picked up the flowers and handed them to April. "He bought these for you, I believe."
April smelled the flowers and grinned.
Smith noticed her reaction. "Yes, of course. But the real reason is what I'm about to tell you."
Roosevelt rolled his eyes. "He really couldn't wait to tell you. He refused to tell me anything until you were here." He tilted his head to the flowers. "I think that's his real way. Splendid job on the copper wiring."
April gave a curt nod and looked for a vase to put the flowers into.
Smith looked at a complicated map. "My way? Pardon," he said in an absentminded manner.
Roosevelt put a hand on his shoulder. "The flowers, waiting to tell Miss Malone your great revelation. Why just on the way here you were telling me what a keen mind she has."
"Yes. Of course. No need for me to compliment her. She knows her virtues." Smith grabbed a map and unrolled it on the table.
"You, sir, are astonishing," said Roosevelt.
"Thank you."
"That wasn't a compliment."
"Oh?" Smith looked up from the map. April was pouring water from a pitcher into a vase with the flowers. "Gardenias. They smell quite pleasant. Anyhow, you can leave those for later."
Smith explained to them the second sun. Roosevelt and April exchanged looks.
"I'm sure you might think I'm a bit mad."
"No. We both know you're quite mad. That's not the question. We believe you. In your own obtuse way," said Roosevelt. "Explain to us what this means."
"A second sun!" said Smith. He looked from face to face, expecting them to make the connection. "I kept thinking that this Martian is such a showboat, he has to be right in front of our noses! Then I saw it!"
"He's hiding in the sun?" Roosevelt raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Did those men knock you about today?"
"What men?" asked April in a protective manner.
"Oh, the usual. Anyhow. Yes. He's hiding in the sun. Not really."
Roosevelt shook his head.
April looked down at the map. "I think I understand what he's telling us."
"He's not a circus pony tapping his damn hoof to answer arithmetic questions," growled Roosevelt. "He can tell us in plain English! What did you see?"
"There was no second sun," said April. "He saw the Martian's secret base."
"In the sky disguised as a sun? Not what I'd call inconspicuous."
"The sun was a reflection. Right?" asked April.
"Yes!" said Smith. His eyes lit up as he looked at April. "Visible only from one point near dusk." He stabbed a finger on the map in the position where he was on the roof. He drew a pencil line straight across Manhattan to the east.
"A building?" asked Roosevelt.
"A building that isn't there. Imagine a large stage illusion. The kind where a horse or woman is caused to vanish. Only, she's still there. This Martian has built himself a secret base right in the heart of the city. Only we can't see it," said Smith.
"Does any of this make sense to you, Miss Malone?" asked Roosevelt.
"Yes. I think so."
"My god, it's contagious."
"No, no. Look over my shoulder. What do you see?" said Smith.
Roosevelt glanced up from the map and looked at the other side of the railroad car. "A window."
"Are you certain? What's behind it?"
"I can't see behind it because it's too dark out."
"Then what do you see?"
"My face."
"Imagine a mirror high up in the sky that reflected the sky. What would you see?"
"Sky? But at different times of the day I'd see opposite parts of the sky," said Roosevelt.
"Yes. But there's a clever arrangement you can make with mirrors so you'd see the sky in back of it and never know it was there."
"Except for the seams," said April.
"Yes!" said Smith. He beamed at her.
"But you could hide them in an unfinished building. Like one of those unfinished skeletons of steel," said April.
"What's the tallest building in New York City?" asked Smith.
"The World Building. Pulitzer's office is on the top floor," said Roosevelt.
"Is it?" asked Smith.
"It's the tallest finished .... I see what you're getting at. There's that skeleton on Park Row. Still waiting for funds to complete it. Builders went bankrupt."
"It's the tallest structure in New York but not the tallest building. People ignore it. Look right past it. If you wanted to lord over everyone in this city, everyone in the world, what better place than the tallest building in the world. Only nobody knows it's even there. Hidden by a series of mirrors in the framework, you could hide an entire floor. You could even moor an airship there at night and nobody would know it was there if the weather was right."
"I don't know. That's an awful big hunch, Schmitty."
"I saw the reflection." Smith pointed to Park Row on the map. "It was coming from that direction. I didn't know that until I looked at this map." He turned to April.
"I think it's an easily testable hypothesis," she said.
"Let's go get my aircraft. The machinists should be finished with the modifications by now."
"Hold up there, Schmitty. It's late at night. We need to go there with the police."
"But he could flee by then."
"I almost lost you today to those bogus health officials. Let's plan this right. We need to get the police on our side." Roosevelt was distracted as a metal chime rung out in the salon car.
Smith walked over to his telegraph machine and examined a paper tape being spit out at a furious pace. "I cued it to look for mentions of 'Martians' on the wire." He dropped the paper tape. His face went white. "It appears the mayor has been abducted."
"By whom?" asked April.
"The Martians."
Roosevelt shook his head. "This takes things to a whole new level."
Smith, April and Roosevelt stood at the bottom of the unfinished Park Row building, gazing upward at the skeletal framework in the moonlight. Deputy Mayor Chesterfield turned to Roosevelt.
"You think he's up there?" The man had been dragged out of bed minutes after it was discovered the mayor had been abducted. Everyone was screaming at him to do something. Anything.
"I don't know. We think there's something suspicious going on," said Roosevelt.
Chesterfield looked to the precinct police captain. The short man just shrugged. Behind him stood two dozen men with billy clubs in hand.
"Are we supposed to climb up there like monkeys?" asked a sergeant.
"We'll leave that to your mother," mumbled a man farther down the line.
"We'll all look like monkeys if we go up there and find nothing," said another.
"Well, Schmitty? How do we get up there?" asked Roosevelt. Inside the fenced-off construction yard, there wasn't a crane or an elevator to be seen.
Smith walked toward the side of the building. "Here. Have a look at the ground. Fresh tire tracks and hoof prints."
Roosevelt and the captain knelt down to the ground. Roosevelt reached out and sniffed the dirt.
"It's fresh, all right." He looked up at Chesterfield. "Something is going on here."
The captain aimed a lantern into the building. Steel girders cast shadows on the concrete foundation. The entire first floor looked like it had been stripped clean of spare tools or buckets after the property went into receivership.
Smith moved toward the center of the building. The metal frame formed a lattice forty stories tall. Toward the center, something blacked out the sky.
"There's something above us," said Smith.
"Just a floor," said the captain.
"Look closer."
The captain squinted his eyes. The underside looked like it was gray at first. Portions of it began to move.
"You're looking at the western sky," said Smith. "Teddy? Are you superstitious?"
"Only when it counts. Step aside gentlemen."
Smith and the captain backed up as Roosevelt pulled his revolver from his holster and aimed it upward. He pulled the trigger and then ran backward a dozen feet.
The shot echoed through the metal girders. There was a pause and then silver pieces of glass began to rain down from above and smash into the foundation. For several seconds, there was an enormous racket as more shards fell from the great height and shattered on the metal girders.
The deputy mayor and his men looked confused.
"Well, that proves that part of the theory." Roosevelt put his revolver back in his holster and picked up a piece of broken mirror. He tossed it aside. "Now, how do we get up there?"
"What about this?" April was standing by a metal box bolted to a girder. A thick lock hung from it.
"I think that's too small to be an elevator, miss," said the captain with an air of condescension.
"Perhaps so, captain. But do the builders usually attach something to the electrical mains before they've even put in a floor?" She pointed to a thick conduit leading from the box into the foundation.
Smith hurried over to the box. "It looks like this might be a controller of some kind. If I had my tools, I could pick it." He began to search his pockets.
Roosevelt nudged him out of the way.
"No need to shoot it, Teddy."
"Posh, my friend. I don't solve everything with a gun. Miss Malone? May I bother you for a hairpin from your delicate head?" April handed him a pin. Roosevelt shoved it into the lock and jimmied it for a moment. It came open.
"Very impressive, Mr. Roosevelt," said April.
"A trick I learned from a trickster at Coney Island. A most clever young fellow."
Smith pulled open the box. There was a large lever. The captain stepped over and reached a hand out to grab it. Smith swatted his hand away.
"Easy there. It's likely booby-trapped. Probably the full current going through there." He pulled a leather glove from his jacket.
The captain pulled his hand away dejectedly, but his heart beat at the prospect of coming so close to be electrocuted. Smith gave the handle a tug. An electric motor whirred to life above them. Far above, a metal cage descended toward them. It took several minutes to reach the foundation. When it reached ground level, it made a loud metal noise as it came to a standstill.
Roosevelt, Smith and the captain peered inside the empty cage. There was another switch on the inside wall.
"Deputy mayor, care to join us?" asked Roosevelt.
"I'll let you be the vanguard." The man took a step back.
The captain motioned for a half-dozen men to join him inside the lift along with Smith and Roosevelt.
Smith saw the expectant look in April's eyes. "Next lift?"
She nodded and watched as the men ascended in the elevator. Her curiosity at what they would find burned in her chest.
"So, what do we do if we find any Martians?" asked the captain as he pulled his revolver from his holster and checked it.
"Arrest them, I suppose," said Roosevelt.
Smith and Roosevelt exchanged glances as the elevator climbed upward. They could see the city through the girders out beyond them. Streetlights flickered and windows glowed as people went about their lives that night. Word had spread about the mayor's abduction and the city was fully awake.
"Impressive view," said Roosevelt. "Like gazing down from Mount Olympus."
"Pulitzer is going to piss himself when he finds out some trespasser has a better view of the city than he does," said the captain.
The elevator came to a stop at the top floor. A large metal door stood before them. One of the policemen reached down and grabbed the handle at the bottom.
"Be ready for anything," said the captain. His men held their guns at the ready.
Roosevelt moved to the front of the lift. "Don't shoot unless you have no choice. And don't be distracted by what you see." He looked back at the men behind him and received some half-committed nods.
The policeman pulled the door up to reveal the Martian secret base.
"My god!" exclaimed one of the policemen as he saw the hideous bodies standing before him.
"Don't shoot!" shouted Smith, but it was too late.
The four policemen unloaded a barrage of bullets at the forms towering in front of them. Hideous to look at, their muscles and veins were clearly visible. Bulging eyeballs stared back at them.
The circular glass surrounding them shattered and amber fluid poured onto the floor. The bodies fell to the ground in a puddle of broken glass and thick fluid.
"They're human," said Smith as he bolted out of the elevator to look down at the fallen forms.
Roosevelt gave the policemen a disgusted look and then stepped out of the elevator.
"Human?" said the captain. He'd stepped one foot out but kept a wary eye on the chamber.
Red and blue veins crisscrossed milky white tissue over red muscle fibers. The men had to pinch their noses at the smell.
"They are, or rather they were, specimens. Those are skinned humans. Look at the anatomy," said Smith.
"Ghastly," said the captain.
"No different than what you'd find at a medical college." Smith looked up at the rest of the chamber.
The floor and ceiling were covered in gleaming metal.
"Remarkable," said Roosevelt. He stood before a giant glass window that overlooked the city. All four sides of the room had portals that allowed a full view of the island and the surrounding areas.
In the middle of the room sat a golden throne, too large for any earth man. A domed ceiling overhead depicted a stellarium with a bright red Mars in the center and a coterie of planets and moons surrounding it.
Smith stepped over to a large telescope in front of the throne. He peered through and could see Central Park vividly in the dark.
"Very impressive optics," said Smith. "The lenses are among the finest I've ever seen."
"Is one of these the mayor?" asked the captain as he looked down at a body. He had a look of disgust on his face.
Smith walked back over to the bodies. He passed by a peculiar control panel and other equipment.
"I don't think so. It takes quite a while to flay a body this precisely. And I think the mayor was a little more stout than these men."
"Who are they?" asked the captain.
"I don't know. Props from a medical college? Abductees? It depends upon your opinion of the events. " Smith stepped over the broken glass to look at the rest of the chamber. The overhead lights were made from a tube-shaped filament light and gave off a bluish cast.
"Looks like we found the other entrance," said Roosevelt. He walked toward a spiral staircase almost hidden in the corner. He drew his gun and walked up it. Three policemen followed behind.
Smith glanced down at a control panel. A row of colored lights blinked back at him. Several switches and the strange Martian script filled the center.
Roosevelt walked back down the steps and holstered his revolver. "There's a mooring hook on the roof. No sign of our friends or the mayor."
Smith stroked his chin and took in the chamber. It looked like something from the cover of a dime novel. Alien, yet familiar. The throne in the middle was like a command chair from where some Martian commander could plot the demise of the surrounding city.
"An odd place for a hideout," said the captain.
"On the contrary," replied Roosevelt. "It's perfect."
"Perfect for what?"
"Perfect for a hunter. This is what we call a high-hide. The highest."
"Hunting what?" The captain looked back over his shoulder at the three horrifying bodies. "Humans?"
"Research," said Smith. "Like a bird watcher is more like it. They sit here and watch. Make their notes." He nodded to the bodies. "And collect their specimens."
"Smith." Roosevelt was kneeling by the throne. "The seat is still warm."
"He must have made his escape when we activated the elevator," said the captain.
"I think we would have seen the airship," replied Smith. Something didn't sit right with him. He knelt down to look at the throne. There was a dark smudge on the side of the cushion. He wiped a finger across it and smelled it. "Oil. Machine oil."
Behind him a policeman reached out to touch the control panel. Smith caught him out of the corner of his eye but was too late.
"Don't touch!" shouted Smith.
Sparks began to fly from the control board.
"Run! To the elevator!" Smith grabbed the nearest policeman by the collar. Roosevelt pushed the other men back to the shaft.
"It's only a few, OH LORD!" screamed the captain as green fire began to erupt from everywhere.
They piled back into the elevator as the secret base filled with the ghastly flames. Roosevelt slammed the door shut as Smith threw the switch to descend. The motor whined from above. As the cage dropped, Smith and Roosevelt exchanged concerned glances. Both were worried what would happen if the flames reached the motor.
Bits of debris landed on the roof of the elevator. Green flames licked around the metal cage as the entire chamber became an inferno. The metal cable that kept them from plummeting into the foundation beneath them made strained sounds as it was heated. The carriage rocked when a metal girder rattled off the edge.
Roosevelt pulled a cigar from his pocket and lit it.
"How can you smoke at a time like this?" asked the captain. His eyes were aimed up at the falling flames.
"Hell, if I'm going to die, it's going to be doing something I enjoy. And since none of you are of the female persuasion, it's the cigar."
"At this point the fall would probably just pulverize our legs. If we could avoid cardiac arrest, we'd live. As invalids of course," replied Smith.
"Don't ruin my cigar, Schmitty."
The elevator reached the foundation and slammed into the concrete. The policeman shoved open the inner gate and ran toward the outside of the building. Smith and Roosevelt hurried after them.
April and the deputy mayor were staring up at the green flames on top of the building.
"Are you OK?" she asked as Smith ran to her side.
"Booby-trapped." Smith craned his neck to see the flames engulfing the secret lair. What was still left collapsed and plummeted to the bottom of the building like a bright green meteor.
The police captain whispered something into the deputy mayor's ear.
"What did you find?" asked April.
"I don't know," replied Smith. "I know what I'm supposed to think. I'm just not sure anymore. I know it's a charade. But I just can't tell what kind."
The captain stepped in front of Smith. "Maybe this will help you decide." Two of his men grabbed him by the arms and forced handcuffs on his wrists.
"What's the meaning of this?" demanded Roosevelt in the deputy mayor's face.
The deputy mayor did his best to stand up to him. "We're in a state of emergency. Your colleague seems a little bit too clever. A little bit too eager to help. He leads us here just in time to see it destroyed."
Roosevelt's hand reached toward his revolver. "You have no authority!"
"I have emergency authority. Take your hand away from your gun or I'll have you arrested, too. And the lady. I don't care what the president thinks," said Chesterfield. "For now, we want your friend in custody under suspicion of being a Martian spy."
Six policemen surrounded Roosevelt and April. Smith shook his head. "We'll sort this out, Teddy." He was led away.
"I'll have you sprung in the hour!" shouted Roosevelt.
"Watch over Miss Malone, please." The policeman pushed Smith out of sight through the fence and toward a wagon.
April turned to Roosevelt. She lowered her voice so the policemen still blocking them couldn't hear. "We have to do something."
"I'm going to march right down to the police station this moment. I'll raise a mob to spring him if I have to."
The officers gave Smith a rude shove and he fell into the back of the wagon. His head hit the floor with a crack. "I'm willing to go willingly," he shouted at them as they closed the door.
"You're not their problem anymore," said a low voice from the back of the wagon.
Smith looked up and saw the face of the man in the black overcoat from earlier that evening. Three other men stared down at him with malice in their eyes.
"You're our problem now, specimen. Search him for any more tricks," said Contral.
Three pairs of hands slapped and punched at Smith as they rifled through his pockets and ripped off his clothes.
"I must pro ...." He was cut short by a boot heel to his face, knocking him unconscious.
Deputy Mayor Chesterfield caught his knees under his desk to prevent his chair from tipping over as Roosevelt jabbed his finger into his chest again. The man's face was inches from his own, the glowing cigar stub threatening to scar his cheek. He tried pleading with the man, but it was like waving a red flag in the face of a bull.
"Please! Please!" shouted Chesterfield between gaps in Roosevelt's tirade when he stopped to blow cigar smoke in his face.
The sound of footsteps came from the stairs as people rushed to find out the cause of the commotion. Chesterfield looked to the door for rescue, only to see Miss Malone slam it shut and slide a bench in front of it -- all while looking angelic.
"Police custody?" hollered Roosevelt. "We went to the precinct station and five others. None of them have seen our man. Why?"
"I don't really ...."
"You don't really? You don't really know why you're such an incompetent fool? I'd try to file a missing person's report, but the last known whereabouts was with your men."
Someone knocked at the door.
"He's busy!" shouted Roosevelt. He clenched a fist and waved it in front of Chesterfield's face.
"You wouldn't dare in front of a lady." The frightened man's eyes darted over to April.
April advanced toward Chesterfield's desk. "You hold him, Mr. Roosevelt, and I'll close my eyes as I pummel him so I won't have to witness it."
Her green eyes were on fire. She'd never struck someone in anger in her life, but April felt like she'd saved up for that moment. She'd stood quietly while the men hauled Smith away. Guilt forced her into a most unladylike behavior.
She rolled up a sleeve of her blouse, clenched a fist and brought it back to strike the man.
Chesterfield's heart sank as he realized the woman was prepared to strike him. It was one thing to have the tyro Roosevelt in your face, another to see a proper young woman driven to such rage.
"I'll tell you everything!"
April kept her fist tightly balled. "Hold back and you'll walk out of here a cripple."
Roosevelt glanced at the woman from the corner of his eye. There was a trace of admiration and shock.
"Everything! Everything! There's a man named Ebelin Contral. He's on some health commission Croker set up. It's somehow related to the military."
"Which branch?"
"I don't know. Or maybe it's just some military men. A committee or something. Edison's men, too."
"Those thugs?" asked Roosevelt.
Chesterfield nodded. "Croker called me. Told me to let them take Smith away."
"Where?"
"I don't know. Croker doesn't either. He just said let Contral handle the man."
"Why?"
Chesterfield shook his head.
"Croker doesn't know? Yet this man works for him?"
"No. His position was bought."
"By whom?"
"I don't know. Ask Croker."
"I would but his men have him hidden in case of another kidnapping. Otherwise I'd be strangling him right now." Roosevelt pulled his finger out of Chesterfield's face.
Chesterfield breathed a sigh of relief. April walked over to the other side of his desk. He panicked and his knees slipped. He fell over backward in his chair. Roosevelt and April rushed to help him up as the door was crashed open by a police lieutenant and a sergeant.
"Are you all right?" asked the lieutenant.
Chesterfield felt Roosevelt's vise-like grip on his right arm and April's nails on his left.
"I'm quite fine," he said in a hoarse voice.
"Just having a bit of a laugh," said Roosevelt. "Chester, here, folded over." He guided him back into his chair.
The lieutenant looked down at the bench still blocking the door.
"Help me move this back?" asked April. Her smile made him blush.
The lieutenant and the sergeant pushed the bench back against the wall and then left after Chesterfield waved them off.
Roosevelt motioned for April to have a seat and then sat down after her.
"How do I find him?" he asked.
"I'll send word to Croker's people. That's the best I can do."
Roosevelt slammed his fist on the desk. "That's the least you can do! I want you to put out a bulletin on this Contral."
"I don't know if I can ...."
"Could you do it if there's a threat on his life?"
"Are you?"
"I'm saying nothing." Roosevelt pulled his coat open to reveal the butt of his pistol. "In the morning I can get a writ from the U.S. marshals and charge you with obstruction."
Chesterfield was about to protest but kept his mouth shut. He knew Roosevelt could do that and more.
"I'll do everything I can. But please understand, these are trying times. Your friend," he tried to make eye contact with April, "he's aroused a lot of suspicion. Especially after the mayor was abducted."
"So you start kidnapping citizens? How is that helpful?"
"We thought he might be connected." He pushed a telegram on his desk toward Roosevelt. "This came in on all the wires before we went to Park Row. No one is supposed to know."
Roosevelt read the paper and then handed it to April. "What does it mean? All it say is, 'Mars will retaliate for inaction'?"
"It came over every official telegraph. London, Paris. All of them. Every embassy. According to the demands, we were supposed to raise the Martian flag by now. That's ... that's why we had Smith picked up."
"Damn fool. And where is he now to help shed light on that?"
Chesterfield shook his head. "I'll make inquiries. I'll find out."
Roosevelt jabbed his finger back in Chesterfield's face. "You do that." He turned to April. "Miss Malone? The hour is late." April stood up and headed to the door with Roosevelt.
Outside, they stood on the sidewalk and looked at the people milling about in front of City Hall.
"I must admit, Miss Malone, I didn't know you had the blood of a tigress."
April said nothing. She was too embarrassed to reveal that she'd actually acted out the scene from a play she'd rehearsed. She'd hoped that Chesterfield had never seen it and realized her bluff.
"We need to find Smith," she said. "Soon."
"I know, Miss Malone. I'm prepared to tear this city apart brick by brick to do so. Unless we can get Croker to talk, which I doubt, I don't know what tack to use. Our man could be sequestered anywhere in this city."
"Yes. But perhaps there's another way," said April.
"How do you mean?"
"This Contral character, I've met men like him before. He's a person who collects oddities. He must have them squirreled away somewhere."
"Yes, but where?"
"Perhaps what we need is bait to lead us to the nest?"
"Make him lead us to him?"
April nodded. "Follow the men in black coats and I think we can find Smith."
"All right, Miss Malone. Please return to the rail car and get some rest. I'll make what arrangements I can." Roosevelt saw the stubborn look in her face. "Please, just a few hours at least."
Pasqual Maspons was out for his morning walk when he saw it happen. He liked to take strolls just as the sun came up and watch the sun glimmer off the Place de la Concorde. He was standing no more than ten feet from where Marie Antoinette and King Louie XVI lost their heads when he noticed a particularly bright flash of light.
He squinted his eyes and had to use his ears to determine the direction. The sound of stone falling on the pavement came from the direction of the obelisk, the so-called Cleopatra's Needle that stood proudly in the middle of the square.
When he looked up, the tip of the point was gone. The sound he had heard was the stones being blown apart at the top. His first impulse told him it had been a lightning strike. But there wasn't a cloud in the sky. From every corner of the square people came running to see what had happened.
A gendarme stood over the gold-leafed pieces and held his arms out to keep anyone from getting closer. He looked at Pasqual, as if to imply he was somehow responsible. The Frenchman shrugged and continued on his walk, not wanting to be bothered by the commotion of the growing crowd.
At that very moment, Alfie Chapman, aid to Lord Nigel, was walking his master's two terriers along the Victoria Embankment on the River Thames. The sun was still over the horizon and the sky was dark blue with faint stars still twinkling. A barge moved slowly in the channel to his left. The smaller dog began to bark and had to be restrained as she yanked at the leash.
As he pulled on the leash, Alfie saw a flash of green light streak down from the sky and hit the top of the Egyptian obelisk that stood along the embankment. There was an explosion, and the tip blew apart in a hundred stone fragments. The dogs let out yelps as pebbles pelted them.
Bits of broken stone fell to the ground beneath the needle and between the two sphinxes that guarded it. The top was pulverized.
His immediate thought was the urgent message Lord Nigel had received in the night. It was something to do with the American Martian nonsense. Some prankster had managed to send a message without the consent of the post office to all of the government offices in London. Simultaneous messages had been received in Paris and New York. Was this related?
A crowd of curious people was watching from Waterloo Bridge. Several coaches had stopped to look at the calamity.
Alfie remembered the trivial fact that the obelisk was one of three. It had a mate in Paris and one in America. He hurried back to Lord Nigel's house to report to him what just happened. The dogs protested at the shortened walk and reluctantly followed on his heels.
Across the ocean it was still dark in New York City, but the city was awake as police and firemen patrolled the streets, looking for signs of their missing mayor, and newspapermen rushed the morning paper out for delivery.
Several hundred people saw the bright flash of green light over Central Park. Some said the light came from the sky. Others said from the monument. Physicists tried to explain it was a trivial matter afterward.
All would agree that after the flash there came a loud explosion followed by a shower of sparks in the middle of the park. The first man on the scene was a police lieutenant who'd been standing guard over the Martian obelisk.
When he reached the foot of Cleopatra's Needle, smoking chunks of stone littered the ground. The tip had been blown apart as if it had been smited.
Telegraph offices around the world were besieged by a signal from no apparent source, just as they had been the night before.
President Harrison's butler woke the commander in chief with the urgent missive that had been handed to him. Through bleary eyes, the president read the message that had been transmitted to the world:
MARS STRIKES. NO MAN. NO CITY. NO NATION IS SAFE. SURRENDER NOW.
Already alarmed by the news of the mayor's abduction, the strike against all three cities was the breaking point. The president had enough. He bolted from his bed in his nightgown. "Get the secretary of war and the secretary of the treasury to my office immediately. I need to know how much gold we have on hand!"
When Smith first came to his senses, his nose told him he was in some kind of zoo. There was the smell of exotic animals in the air -- meat eaters and herbivores all under one roof. There was straw underneath him, and he could clearly tell he was in a cage. A gaslamp cast a small glow in the hallway before him and sent dim light through the bars in front of him. The rock wall behind him felt damp and dank like a cellar.
He pulled himself against the back wall. Naked except his boxers, he pulled his knees in for warmth.
"Well, this is an unfortunate situation," he said to himself.
"That it is, monsieur," came a gravel-sounding voice down the hall.
"Hello? Is someone there?" asked Smith.
"Oui. I am a prisoner like you."
"And what was your crime?"
"Curiosity. I wanted to find out what was at the other end of the bottle. Zen this ... this rat catcher and his men captured me."
"Why?"
"Because of my charm. My wit. My way with the ladies."
Smith paid close attention to the voice. Besides the accent, he could pick up other details. "You're a wolf man of sorts, aren't you? Etes-vous du Québec?"
"Oui. Have you heard of me?"
"No. It's just that you have a very high timbre for such a low register, it suggests a small diaphragm and esophagus, but your vocal chords are quite dense. The work of Doctor Brown-Séquard has revealed an excess of a hormone known as testosterone could cause this. In your case, I would imagine it would make a very hirsute man, making your stature as a dwarf all the more interesting."
"Oui, but it is what's on the inside that counts. I can tell that you are the 'clever man' that this maniac has been obsessing about. It would seem he finds you almost as interesting as these Martians."
"I've only seen a small dose of his attention, and I don't care much for it." Smith stood up and examined the door to the cage. It was padlocked shut with a huge lock. "I have much more serious business to attend to than his games."
"I'm sure you do, but this man takes his games very seriously. By the smell of things, they can be quite fatal."
"Well, my friend, I don't plan on you or me staying around long enough to find out."
"You would help me escape?"
"Of course. We peculiar men must look out for each other." Smith got to his knees and searched the straw on the floor for anything that could be used as a tool.
"They come, monsieur."
The sound of a key in a lock echoed down the hallway. Smith sat back down. He heard a loud snort from another cell.
"I'd say bless you, but I don't believe that was you sneezing," said Smith.
"No. That was one of the other guests. He's not as talkative as you."
"I see," said Smith.
The door opened and two sets of heavy footsteps walked toward his cell. One of Contral's men set a chair down in front of the bars. Contral unbuttoned his coat and sat down. There was a large clipboard in his lap. He uncapped a pen and opened a folder.
"What year were you born?" asked Contral as if it were a mundane interview.
"Pardon me?" asked Smith.
"You heard the question."
"It's a personal matter," said Smith.
"It's a mere formality I ask of all our guests."
"I decline." Smith looked away.
Contral nodded to the man standing to his right. He wore a black bowler and a heavy black coat. The man slapped a billy club in the palm of his hand.
"If you choose not to answer the question then Mr. Henley will be forced to step inside to assist."
Smith could still feel the bruises from the abduction. But that was when they caught him by surprise. "Just Mr. Henley? What about his partners in crime?"
"They're doing other tasks. But I can have them here in a moment," said Contral.
"That might be advisable. Should Mr. Henley step into this cage unassisted, I'll conduct my own examination using his club."
Contral shook his head. "I thought you were an intellectual. I doubt you have much capacity for violence."
"What about me would make you think that?" Smith turned to the man and glared. "Please, send Mr. Henley in now. My odds are much improved right now if it's just you and him." Smith jumped to his feet and ran to the front of the cage.
Contral jumped back in his chair. Henley stepped forward and slammed the club at the bars where Smith was gripping them. The wooden shaft clanged against the bars as Smith slipped away. Smith dropped to his knees and punched the brute in the testicles.
Henley let out a moan and then collapsed to the floor, his eyes watering. Contral slid his chair backward as he looked at the fallen man who was hyperventilating and doubled over clutching his groin.
Smith stood up. "Predictable and clumsy. Where were we?"
Contral tried to regain his composure. He pretended to check something off on the folder while making certain that he was out of Smith's reach. He looked up when he heard the sound of something hitting metal. Smith had grabbed the club and was now brandishing it inside the cage.
"It's a pity Henley didn't have a keyring on him or I'd be checking off boxes with your blood," said Smith.
Contral's pen hand fell to his lap. There was something menacing in Smith's gaze -- almost animal. For a moment he was uncertain he had the right man. The man he expected was supposed to be some kind of rarified intellectual and not some savage brute who played by dirty rules. He glanced down at his henchman, who was struggling to get to his feet.
"Mr. Smith, you'll find we have all kinds of measure to get your compliance. The first ones are civility. From there it descends into more physical means. And finally, if you can't tell me the things I want to know, I'll take them from your body, organ by organ."
"To what end?" asked Smith.
"The betterment of society, of course. Mr. Henley, once the tears stop streaming down your face, would you be so kind as to fetch one of the tools we use for more difficult specimens?"
Henley pulled himself to his feet by leaning against the far wall. He glowered at Smith. "Gladly."
"Why are you sitting here when there are alien visitors that are so much more interesting out there? After all, I'm only human," asked Smith as he sat back down.
"Are you human? There's some question about that."
"Quite."
"I've heard rumors of other words. Vampire?"
Smith rolled his eyes. "Bring your neck closer and I'll try a taste. Better yet, set me free in the sunlight."
"I've found that doesn't work like the legends."
"So you believe in vampires?" asked Smith.
Contral nodded. He held his arms apart. "A great many interesting things try to sneak their way into this city. You would be amazed by the things I find skulking in basements. They all end up here."
"And what about our friends from outerspace?" asked Smith.
"So, you believe these Martians are genuine?" Contral seemed genuinely interested in Smith's thoughts on the matter.
Smith decided to toy with the man's curiosity. "One hundred percent. I've been to their secret base and have found physical evidence that is utterly convincing. Speaking of secret lairs, where are we?"
Contral shook his head. "I wish I could believe you. As to your whereabouts, that's a secret we plan to keep. But I think the location would amuse you."
Henley came running back down the corridor and whispered something in Contral's ear. His expression turned to shock.
Contral quickly stood up. "We'll continue this interview later. It seems our Martian visitors have declared war."
The two men hurried back down the hall, slamming the metal door shut behind them.
"He is not a man that likes to be made a fool of," said the man in the other cell.
"Pity he's such a fool."
"Yes, but he's a fool that likes to cause pain. I have the scars to show for it."
"You don't mean?"
"Oui, he loves to slice things open and look inside. I fear if I don't get this infection treated soon, I may die," said the small wolf man.
Felix La Court, otherwise known as the The Ravenous Wolf Boy, looked up from his poorly stitched wound when he heard the sound of something echo down the hallway. "Sacrebleu! What was that?"
Smith held the two ends of the billy club he'd broken with his bare hands and regarded the sharp-splintered edges. "I think it's time for sharp sticks."
President Harrison looked at the faces of his Cabinet as they sat around the conference table. One looked more grim than the other.
"You want to do what with the gold?" asked Treasury Secretary Charles Foster a second time.
"Use it as bait," said Harrison.
"You can't be serious."
The president had spent the entire morning concocting a plan with his secretary of war, Stephen Elkins, and come to the idea of the ploy.
Elkins spoke up. "It's a gambit. Either these Martians are what they say they are and we really do have no choice but to pay tribute and avoid the destruction they threaten us with or they're not, and we uncover the ruse."
"But how?" asked Foster. His duty was to safeguard the gold deposits of the United States. The idea of pulling them out of the vaults and just handing them to whomever was repellent to him. "I mean, we still think this is an elaborate hoax, correct?"
"We don't know what to believe. But we know we must take action," said Harrison.
"But the damage to the monuments could be sabotage. It seems so flimsy of evidence to turn over our gold deposits."
"There's another detail, something we haven't shared outside this office," said Harrison. He nodded to Elkins.
Elkins straightened his tie and stood up. "We have in the war office an entire department devoted to mapping foreign terrains and enemy capabilities. It's one of our most secret divisions. The intelligence there could very well plot the course of a war before it ever starts."
"We're all aware of this," said Foster.
"Yes, but what you may not be aware of is the fact that we have our own telegraph system used to send encoded communications. Less than two dozen men in the world know the existence of this system. Nor the location of the transmitters and receivers. At the moment we were receiving the 'Mars Attacks' transmission, our central telegraph received a series of unusual signals. At first we thought there was some kind of malfunction. They didn't spell out letters or words. Just dots and dashes. One of the men who works in the office is quite clever and made a realization." Elkins motioned for two men holding a banner to step forward. "These gentleman, from my office, were able to assemble the message. They took the paper strips that came from the telegraph machine and laid them out in rows. We've assembled them for you." He nodded to the men to unfurl the banner.
The bottom of the canvas unrolled and touched the floor, revealing the image. Made of thousands of dots, the entire image was six foot by six foot. It showed an aerial view of the White House.
"For the last two hours, we've been receiving another image. We suspect it's one of our strategic naval bases. Now, taking photographs from balloons is nothing new, we did it in the Civil War, but the quality of this is quite good and appears to be taken from a much higher altitude than we're capable of. And the real point is, I suspect, that given the recent abduction and attacks, is that a power capable of taking this photograph," he pointed toward the ceiling, "right over our very heads is a serious threat. They could just as well drop bombs as take photos."
"So we give in?" asked Foster.
"No. We draw them in," said Harrison.
"We assemble several of out battle cruisers around Manhattan. We place heavy artillery on tops of the buildings. We place the gold in the middle of the city, like they've asked. And when they come," Elkins slammed his fist into his palm, "we either reveal these hoaxers for what they are or give the Martians a bloody nose."
"But is that wise? What if they are Martians?" asked Foster
"Better now to find out the color of their blood," said Harrison. "We will not yield to them in the long run. We must draw them in and see if we can hurt them."
"And if they are what they claim? And they strike back?" Foster pointed to the aerial image.
"Then god help us all," said Harrison. "I've already spoken to the prime minister and the president of France. They've indicated that they, too, have received strategic images like the one before you. The three of us are willing to work together if this threat proves real."
"Yes, but what about the gold?" Foster was overwhelmed by the direction of events.
"Safe as anywhere," said Elkins. "I'll have every gun and cannon on the Eastern Seaboard trained upon it. Nothing will get off that island."
"Elkins, will you see to it that we place the Martian flag?" asked Harrison.
The man nodded.
"It sounds like we're surrendering," said Foster.
"I prefer to think of it as throwing the gauntlet down," replied Elkins. "Calling their bluff."
Foster could tell the man's confidence was sincere, but the thought nagged at him that the Martians, or whoever, had already thought several steps ahead of them. The photograph was just one example.
Smith laid back in the straw and stared up at the ceiling. He ignored the itching sensation and the damp and the cold. He tried for the moment not to think about the smells and what they informed him of his surroundings. He was stumped. The Martian Emperor had eluded him. Just when he thought he was about to rip away the curtain and reveal the machinations and find the culprit, he found yet another set piece and stage. The effort of the men behind the scheme had surprised him. The secret Martian base, high above the city, the three-fingered handprint. It was all planted evidence to challenge his skepticism. His skepticism. Smith thought that over for a moment.
The man masquerading as the Martian Emperor was quite clever. He managed to outwit the world and Smith. But those little clues he'd left behind seemed almost superfluous. Why go through the effort? It wasn't like the head of the police or any of the other government agencies were going to find that hidden base. None of them had even paid attention to April's discovery of the prior airship event in Edison's yard. Why even use an airship and an alien disguise?
Then there were the footprints. The proof in Central Park that the Martians had the fantastic strength they pretended to possess. All of these details were left behind not to fool the authorities but to stymie the one man who would look past the charade, a man capable of accepting the fantastical but not ready to believe it on questionable evidence. This Martian Emperor was taunting him. The plot was some grander scheme Smith had yet to understand, but the side plots were directed at him.
His current predicament was one more stumbling block thrown in his path. The men in black coats and the deluded Ebelin Contral were rocks and branches thrown on the trail to slow him down. Too focused on the Martian Emperor, Smith had allowed himself to carelessly fall into the clutches of one more man trying to pry his secrets from him. The secret operating room and cruel experiments had all the signs of a man associated with his nemesis the White Apothecarians. Were they connected to the Martian Emperor? Smith wasn't sure.
Contral seemed genuinely fixated on the Martian. Smith read his reactions as being genuine. He was just as baffled and curious as everyone else. It had to be a separate plot, perhaps something involving the strange men who guided his enemies' actions or maybe by someone unconnected but knowledgeable of them and their deceits. The one connection Smith was certain of was the connection to himself. The would-be Martian Emperor knew about Smith. The technologies he possessed could have come straight from his own mind. And perhaps they did ....
Smith realized his biggest flaw had been his own arrogance. All of the miracles he'd seen were things he could have accomplished. But Smith had thought no man as clever as himself. He tried to find proof of the hoax when what he should have done is look for the man behind it. A man a lot like himself.
But Smith feared he was too late. Chasing down acid-burn victims and hidden palaces had given this man the time to lay out all the pieces on the board. This was the end game and Smith still didn't know the rules. In a day, the Martian Emperor would have his gold and the satisfaction of having cowered the world before him. Worst of all, he would have bested Smith.
"Have you given up, my friend?" rumbled Felix's deep voice from the adjoining cell. "I haven't heard you toying with that lock in some time."
"I've mostly made splinters of my tools. No, I was thinking. Thinking what a fool I've been to get trapped in here. Thinking of my arrogance."
"Oui, it was my vice that got me here, as well. A man such as me had developed a kind of bravado to wear as armor in the world. But at night when no one is around, I find a bottle and release my emotions. That is when I am weak. That was when this miserable man came for me. Had I a clearer head, I would have given him a scrape. My friends on the boardwalk may have come to my rescue. Now I am in here. Trapped like the beast people see me for."
"But you're not. You're a man as clever as any other."
"Perhaps, but we two clever men are trapped like the other animals in this menagerie. To be dissected under the knife. Just as our poor friend in the other cage."
"About him, is he a rhino?"
"Oui. By what means of deduction have you deduced that?"
"By the smell, clearly an herbivore. By the sound of his toes on the stones, an ungulate. By the echo they make, a large one. By the sound of the bars when his horn strikes them, one horn. Thus my deduction."
"Very clever. All of that from your other senses. Anything else?"
"Yes. I believe he's a white rhino of a very particularly ivory-colored variety."
"And you can tell this from those clues?" asked Felix.
"No. I can deduce this from the fact that he's being held in captivity. Any other rhinoceros wouldn't likely be worth Mr. Contral's attention. People like him have a fixation on things that are pure white or possess one horn. They think them magical."
"I've named him Brutus. He's a quite docile creature. It's a pity he's going to meet the same fate as us."
Smith sat up and pulled at the bars. "There's still hope."
"That is what keeps me alive. I pray my friends will find me," said Felix.
"And mine too."
The police sergeant pulled his club from his belt and threaded his way into the thick crowd. "What's all this about?" he demanded to a man in a camel hair coat.
"Look, you fool," said the man as he pointed up.
The sergeant deliberated giving the man a cuff on the ear but decided that someone who felt comfortable enough to talk down to a sergeant like him was probably not a man to use force on without real provocation. He followed the line from the man's finger to the top of the World Building. "Mother of god!"
Police whistles screeched and fire bells clanged for several blocks around. All eyes were on the strange figure climbing up the side of the building. Green skinned, with a large round head, two antenna stuck out on either side. A long silver cape hung from his shoulders. He perched on a ledge and a metallic voice shouted out to the crowd below.
"CITIZENS OF THE WORLD! I AM THE PRINCE OF SATURN! I'VE COME TO AID YOU IN THIS TIME OF DESPAIR! FEAR NOT!"
The figure reached up to the next ledge and continued climbing the building.
At the top floor, Joseph Pulitzer opened up his window and peered down after his secretary came running into his office to tell him of the commotion.
"Get a photographer down there!" he shouted. "Better yet, get another on the roof. Let's get some photos the Post won't be able to match!"
His secretary ran off to tell the city room to dispatch their photographers.
"Slow news day got you down?" came a female voice from his office door.
"Have you seen this?" Pulitzer was still staring at the man climbing toward his office.
Nellie Bly walked over to the window and looked down. "My. Another one?"
"This city appears to be crawling with alien visitors. Maybe we should call over to Blackwell Island and see if they've opened the doors on the asylum?"
The strange man had reached another ledge.
"What happens when he gets up here?" Nellie asked.
"You interview him, of course."
"No trip to the nuthouse?"
Pulitzer looked away from the window at his prize investigative reporter. "Not until we get our exclusive." He yelled out to his secretary. "I want a photographer in here."
"Want a photo of you shaking hands?" asked Nellie.
"Better yet, I want the Saturn Prince curtsying to you as he asks for your hand in marriage before he whisks you off to his planet to be married."
"I don't know if that's a laughing matter anymore. I hear Harrison is going to offer up the gold."
"Between you, me and the wall, Miss Bly, I just had a man from the government here to tell me they're going to put the Martian flag on the building. Meanwhile, two Navy men were scoping out the roof. I suspect for a Howitzer."
"War with the Martians?" said Nellie. "I still find it all hard to believe." She watched as the Saturn Prince climbed another level. "Just a bigger folly than this acrobat."
"Maybe so. But I hear the powers that be are more frightened than they let on. Unlike the green man below us, these Martians, hoaxers or not, may be a serious threat. Still no sign of the mayor."
"Probably cowering in some basement saloon," said Bly. "Looks like our man is almost here." She stepped back from the ledge.
A green-gloved hand slipped over the edge of the window. With a flip of a cape, the Saturn Prince bounded onto the ledge. Cheers came from the crowd below.
"GREETING EARTHLINGS! I AM THE PRINCE OF SATURN!"
Pulitzer motioned to a photographer waiting at the doorway. The man ran in with his box camera and snapped a photograph of the green man triumphantly standing in the window.
"So what circus are you from?" asked Nellie. "Do you have a handbill?"
"I AM HERE TO BRING A MESSAGE! DO NOT BE FOOLED BY THESE MARTIANS!"
"Trust us, nobody here his fooled," replied Pulitzer. He tried to see the face inside the helmet but the visor was too narrow.
"I MUST NOW TRANSMIT MYSELF ELSEWHERE."
The Saturn Prince reached a hand up to his chest and twisted a knob. There was a loud bang and a puff of smoke. Pulitzer's first reaction was that a bomb had gone off. He stepped in front of Nellie, but it was over. A dissipating cloud of smoke was where the man had just been standing.
"Oh my! He jumped!" Nellie ran to the window and looked over the edge. Pulitzer leaned next to her. The Saturn Prince had vanished. The crowd below looked back up at him.
"Search the roof!" shouted Pulitzer as he craned his neck to see if the Saturn Prince had climbed above them.
A photographer's head looked over the ledge and shouted down. "Nobody up here but me and the Navy men."
Pulitzer pulled himself back into his office. Nellie was leaning on his desk, staring at the window frame and trying to imagine where the Saturn Prince had gone. The two of them exchanged glances.
"These are strange times, Miss Bly. Strange times."
Four hundred feet below, an excited man in a black bowler and overcoat ran to the nearest telegraph office to send a dispatch to his superior.
The police and fire brigade standing in front of City Hall had their eyes peeled on the sky around the building, watchful for any attackers from the air. When the explosion went off behind them, half the men threw themselves to the ground.
It wasn't a large explosion. It was more light and smoke than concussion. It was the kind of thing a stage magician would do to direct an audience's attention -- which is exactly what it did. As the police and firemen got to their feet, they saw the men and women around the nearby cable car station pointing to the top of City Hall.
A green man with two antennas on his helmet and a silver cape stood on top of the dome, adjusting a dial on his chest. A metallic voice echoed across the streets.
"GREETINGS EARTHLINGS! I AM THE SATURN PRINCE AND BRING YOU A MESSAGE OF PEACE!"
The arrival of the mysterious figure would have been met with measured skepticism if it hadn't already been for the current Martian panic and the news that only moments ago a figure matching that description had been seen uptown, balancing on the ledge of the tallest (finished) building in the world, only to vanish in a puff of smoke -- or "transmit" as reports now coming out of Pulitzer's own office had said.
Carriages came to a stop. Men and women leaped off moving streetcars and pushed themselves toward the sidewalk to get a glance of this new character in the strange drama that was engulfing the city and the world.
"DO NOT BE AFRAID OF THESE MARTIANS! STAND TALL! DO NOT BE FOOLED!" Shouted the Saturn Prince from his amplifier.
Two policemen, already standing guard on the top of the building, rushed to the pedestals at the base of the dome and tried to climb up. The Saturn Prince grabbed the flagpole above the statue at the top and swung around in an acrobatic arc above their heads.
"It's like our gravity is nothing to him!" shouted a man to the crowd.
"TOGETHER THROUGH VALOR AND REASON WE CAN STAND UP TO THESE MARTIAN TYRANTS!"
One of the policeman managed to get a foot over the ledge. He started to pull himself up over the top of the pedestal. The Saturn Prince did another spin and then came to his feet. One hand held the flagpole as he leaned to the side. Below him the policeman began to slip. The crowd let out a gasp as they calculated the trajectory to the ground below.
A silver-gloved hand shot out from the Saturn Prince, and he grabbed the policeman by the collar. He helped him onto the ledge. The policeman tried to catch his breath and turned white when he looked over the side and saw how far he almost fell.
The crowd roared their approval. The Saturn Prince held out his arm and took a bow.
"LET US STAND TOGETHER!"
He reached out to the policeman to help him to his feet. The policeman carefully stood up, grasping the flagpole with his right hand. His left went to his belt and pulled out a pair of handcuffs. The second policeman tried to grab the Saturn Prince by his ankles.
The crowd booed. The Saturn Prince did a backflip on the narrow dome and landed on the pedestal behind the second man. He tapped him on the shoulder and then leaped to the roof of the building before he could turn around. The crowd laughed and let out a cheer.
Twelve firemen came running onto the roof from the other direction. The Saturn Prince jumped to the outer ledge and faced them. His silver cape flapped in the wind. The firemen formed a half-circle and stepped closer. They stretched out their arms to grab him. The Saturn Prince held out his hands
"I BRING YOU A MESSAGE OF PEACE!"
The firemen stepped closer. The crowed screamed as the Saturn Prince leaped into the air and off the ledge. The firemen looked shocked. They stared over the edge at the crowd below.
Laughter erupted when the audience at the street level realized the firemen couldn't see that the Saturn Prince was now holding onto the ledge below the roof, having only feigned his leap of death. He dropped to the next ledge and ran to the opposite side of the building along the narrow passage. A man tried to grab him from a window, only to have his hat taken off and tossed to the street by the passing Saturn Prince.
When he reached the far end of the building, the firemen all ran back down into the top floor. The Saturn Prince grabbed a balustrade and climbed back onto the roof and ran toward the dome for another assault.
The two policemen ran toward him, as if to tackle him to the ground. They tripped and fell to the tar paper roof when the Saturn Prince did a somersault over their heads. He scrambled back up the dome and took his position by the statue of Lady Justice holding her scales. He gave her a kiss on the cheek to the crowd's approval.
A police captain standing on the sidewalk had enough. He pulled his revolver from his holster and took aim. The shot struck the statue's scale and sent down a cascade of white marble.
The crowd booed the man and overran the barricades to wrestle him to the ground. The Saturn Prince touched a dial on his chest and was gone in an explosion of smoke.
At the back end of the hall, three men in black coats and bowlers were trying to figure out how to get to the roof when the Saturn Prince landed on top of their carriage with a thud.
"TAKE ME TO YOUR LEADER!"
The Saturn Prince did a flip and landed on the ground before them. Six hands grabbed him and stopped him from touching the dial on his chest, lest he vanish again. They pulled him into the carriage and ripped the device from his chest. He struggled, but it was to no avail. Boots and fists hit his green body. The sinister men exchanged proud looks as they finally captured an extraterrestrial.
April Malone pocketed the spyglass she'd been observing the men in black coats with from the second floor of the cable car building.
"Did they capture him?" asked Roosevelt.
"Yes. It looks like they're being a bit rough with him."
"He can handle it. Trust me. Let's see if we can find out where they're taking him."
Contral looked down at the Saturn Prince strapped to the gurney. His uniform was made from a thick oilskin, canvas-like cloth. His head was concealed by a helmet with two antenna on either side. Contral's assistant, Henley, reached underneath and pulled it off.
The helmet made a hissing noise and the green man gasped for air. His head came off the gurney and then collapsed as he passed out in a violent spasm.
Contral panicked. "What did you do?"
"You told me to pull the helmet off!"
"I didn't tell you to rip off his air supply!" Contral reached a hand down to feel the man's neck. His pulse was faint.
"But he looks human," said Henley.
"How many green men have you met?" asked Contral. "Perhaps his skin is some kind of plant-like organ?"
Henley shrugged and examined the hissing helmet. "Should I put this back on him?"
"No. I think he's still breathing. Our thin atmosphere should keep him unconscious."
Henley looked down at his own fingertips. They were green. He held them up for Contral to see.
"Our atmosphere is like acid to him. He's disintegrating," explained Contral.
"That or it's paint," said Henley.
"What are you trying to say?" Contral looked back at the body.
"I think he's a fake. An escapee from the nuthouse."
"A maniac with a teleportation device?" Contral was so delighted with his find, he was still thinking of the possibilities. "Imagine what we could do with that technology." He had private visions of teleporting in and out of bank vaults with pockets filled with gold.
"If it's real."
Contral shook his head. "You have a primitive mind. Our Saturn Prince comes from a race even more advanced than the Martians. He uses teleportation to transmit himself between worlds, while the Martians use crude craft."
"How do we know it's not a bunch of hocus pocus?"
"Let's have a look at the contraption then." Contral felt the pulse of the alien again.
"Leave him here?"
"No. Let's put him into a cage, just in case his alien physiology brings him back to consciousness." Contral felt the fabric of the suit. "Strip him, in case he has any more devices."
Henley found a zipper and removed the alien's outer garb. "You have to admit, other than being green, he looks very human."
"Yes, but obviously an advanced race."
"What makes you say that?" To Henley he just looked like any other man. Young, maybe in his early twenties at most. Stocky build, a little on the short side.
"Well, he's circumcised to begin with," said Contral.
Henley gave him a funny look. "You're an odd man, boss."
"Wheel him into a cage." Contral took the helmet and suit and walked into the other room.
Henley unlocked the door to the menagerie and pushed the gurney through. He had to walk past the body of the Saturn Prince to pull him inside. For a brief moment, he thought he felt something touch him. When he turned around, the man was still strapped into the gurney. He pushed him into the dank hallway.
"What mad science is zis?" Felix called out to Henley in his low voice. "Your insane friend plans to dye us like Easter eggs now?"
"Shut up, beast," said Henley as he pushed the cart by.
Smith looked up from the back of his cage at the body as it came into view. "You have to be kidding me. Seriously, that's a man and not an alien."
Henley stopped the gurney and walked up to the bars. "Still feeling brave?"
Smith contemplated making another lunge at the man. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the green man on the gurney raise a finger to his lips and wink. Just a quick as it happened, his hand went back to his side and was somehow still fastened into the straps.
"So, do you think this is a fake, too? Should we poke around inside him just to find out?" asked Henley. He turned to the green man. "If you're not the genuine article, maybe there's no harm in me softening you up a bit?" He raised a billy club to hit the unconscious man.
"AAAAAAAARGH!" screamed Smith. "He's in my brain!" He leaped toward the corner of his cage and clutched at his hair. "Get out! Get out of my mind!"
Henley lowered his club and looked at Smith, confused.
Smith pointed at him and screamed. "He's the one you want! Violate his mind!"
Henley quickly pushed the gurney into the adjoining cell and then locked it shut. He hurried out of the hallway and slammed the door behind him.
"Sorry for almost spoiling the ruse," whispered Smith as he sat back down.
The man in the other cage spoke in a Brooklyn accent. "No worries, my friend. I could have taken his club at any time. Better this way, though. Felix? How are you, pal?"
"Magnificent," growled the hairy dwarf.
"I'll have us free in no time," said the green man.
"I've tried the locks. They're a bit more difficult than they look," said Smith.
"That's why your friends sent me."
"And who might you be?" asked Smith.
"He's a friend of mine from the boardwalk at Coney Island. It sounds like your man Roosevelt and Miss Malone went to him for help," said Felix.
"How?" Smith looked at the bolted door dejectedly.
"Haven't you heard of the World Famous Harry Houdini?" asked Felix.
"Er, no," said Smith.
"Soon the world will know my name," came the other man's voice followed by the sound of clanking metal.
Smith looked up from the floor at the defiant young man standing in front of him in a triumphant pose and grinned. "Pretty good, kid. Pretty good. So is the green paint part of your gimmick?"
Houdini looked down at his green body. "Um, no. That was Mr. Roosevelt's idea."
Roosevelt looked across 5th Avenue at the crowd of men gathered in front of the building. Several of them had the heavy black coats of the mysterious "health department." Others looked like hired thugs brought in to protect the building during the Martian panic. "It's a fortress," he muttered.
"It's a zoo," replied April. They'd followed the black carriage from City Hall on foot and watched it go into Central Park and then vanish in a service building behind the zoo. "That building seems small."
"Most likely it leads to an underground passage to a basement below the park."
"They're keeping him hidden underneath a zoo?" April was infuriated by the notion.
"Actually, it's quite clever. If this Contral figure is in the business of collecting all the strange things he finds in the cities and what comes crawling off the docks, putting them under a zoo makes sense. Who would question the cages and strange noises?"
"It's inhuman," said April.
"I think that's the point." Roosevelt stomped out his cigar. "Some of those men look like they work for Boss Croker. Of course he'd have a hand in this nasty business."
"I see a few policemen, too," said April.
"Damn. I don't know how our Coney Island trickster can help Smith escape that." He looked down the street. Several police wagons were blocking off the streets to the north. He checked his watch. "It looks like they're getting ready to pay the ransom. Any other day I could raise an army to take them on. But today? All the armies are spoken for. I even saw naval men mounting cannon and machine guns on roofs around the park.
"Miss Malone, we need to think of a plan. In the meantime, we have to make sure that once we get Smith sprung, he stays sprung. I don't want this health official grabbing Smith again in all the commotion."
"Dynamite the building? Seal off the fiend's lair?" There was fire in April's eyes.
"Your fondness for Smith is quite touching. I was thinking more on the lines of an exposé. If we reveal the secret prison, perhaps that would force Contral into the light. When our Saturn Prince was mugging in Pulitzer's window, I think I may have seen Nellie Bly looking out. After her undercover work as an inmate at Blackwell Island's asylum, she's developed quite the reputation for uncovering this sort of chicanery. There's a telegraph office two blocks over."
"I'll get right on it," said April. She started down the sidewalk and then glanced back at Roosevelt. "Say, this isn't a ploy to get me out of the way while you charge in?"
"That would be foolhardy, Miss Malone. I'm outnumbered."
"I'm not sure if that's a satisfactory denial," said April.
"It's the best I can do. Please hurry."
Smith peered between the gap in the door as Houdini tried to work the lock. Contral and Henley were standing over the teleportation device, trying to figure out how it worked.
"Looks like Miss Malone was in my junk chest," said Smith.
"I could use some of it here. I'm having trouble with the lock." Houdini gave the door a slight shove. "I think there's a bar on the other side."
"I don't see how we can get past that without alerting Contral and his goon."
"I think there's a ramp on the other side of the double doors. At the top of that is the building I was led in through. I heard Contral talking to some men out there," said Houdini.
"And I bet they're armed."
"Maybe we should wait for nightfall?" asked Houdini.
"I don't know how much time we have. We need to stop the Martian plot, not to mention get our friend Felix to a proper doctor."
Felix scratched his hairy chin. "I appreciate watching you two working on ze delicate lock. Perhaps finesse is not what is needed? I think I have a solution if you two would oblige me."
"What are you thinking?" asked Smith.
"You know, before the boardwalk, I spent some time in the circus. You could say I have a certain animal magnetism."
Contral was frustrated by the teleportation device. The switches appeared to do nothing. He was contemplating reviving the green man to ask him how to get it to work. He wanted to uncover its secrets before Croker or the military men asked around about it. Time was of the essence.
Henley stood over the device and regarded it with a skeptical eye. The whole thing smelled fishy to him. He was about to comment that the switches looked like the kind he'd seen in a parts catalog when he heard a scream from the locked menagerie.
"The green man! He's trying to walk though my wall!" Smith screamed from behind the door. "He's stuck!"
Contral's eyebrow shot to the top of his forehead. He grabbed the keyring off his desk and ran to the door.
"Wait!" shouted Henley. He grabbed a shotgun from the rack. "This could be a trick."
Contral nodded and waited for the man to point the gun at the door before lifting the barricade. He set it aside and turned the key. "This better not be a ruse, Mr. Smith."
He swung the door open. The gaslamps had been put out and the entire menagerie was in darkness. Contral took a step back. He wasn't sure if he should go inside or lock the door and grab a lantern. Henley turned to him for instructions.
A loud snort came from within the corridor. Henley raised the gun but was too late. An ivory horn knocked it out of his hands. He threw himself to the side as the white rhino burst through the doorway. Contral shrieked and was thrown against the wall as the animal bucked his head into him.
"Take that, you filthy cretin!" shouted Felix from atop the creature.
Henley pulled his legs to his chest as the small wolf man rode the rhino into the center of the chamber. The creature thrashed around and knocked over the desk and tables. He looked down at the dropped rifle and reached for it. A green foot kicked him in the jaw and he was out cold.
Smith and Houdini jumped out of the corridor and delivered a barrage of kicks and punches to the men.
The rhino battered his head against a large door.
"I think he smells the fresh air!" shouted Felix.
Smith ran over to the outer doors and threw open the bar blocking them. The rhino knocked them into splinters and then charged up the ramp.
"Here!" Houdini handed Smith a black overcoat.
The two of them chased after Felix and Brutus up the ramp. Using his spike like a fireman's ax, the rhino ripped open the wooden door at the top of the ramp and sunlight poured in.
"Get zem!" Felix urged the rhino toward the crowd of men standing in front of the entrance.
The men scattered at the sight of the furry man astride the magnificent white rhino. Furious, the creature flipped over a carriage and stomped it to splinters. Felix struggled to stay on the animal's back. Smith and Houdini ran through the gap and stood back while the rhino snorted and charged the men in black coats. Finally all of Contral's men fled.
"I do not think I can stop him! I think he wants water!" Felix shouted over his shoulder as the rhino ran toward the nearest pond.
Roosevelt watched the escape from across the street. Frozen in amusement, his newly lit cigar fell to the ground. He turned when he heard the sound of small feet running toward him on the sidewalk.
"I reached Pulitzer himself! They're sending a staff of photographers and reporters right now to find out what happened to the Saturn Prince." April looked at the expression on his face. "Did I miss anything?"
"I assure you I'm quite all right, Miss Malone," said Smith. She'd been pestering him ever since she realized that he was barefoot and nearly naked under the thick black coat. Contral and his henchmen had vanished when Pulitzer's pressmen showed up. Now they were headed uptown to follow the latest turn of events.
Across the street, Brutus was grazing on a shrubbery under the protective watch of a fire crew from Brooklyn that Houdini had befriended. Felix sat atop the pump truck and watched the crowds that had gathered. They'd found a doctor to sanitize and tape up his surgical wounds.
As interesting as the furry man was, the crowd was watching the procession of police and soldiers who were guarding the gold bullion that was being brought into Central Park.
"So they're going along with it?" asked Smith.
"Indeed," said Roosevelt. He pointed to several rooftops where men were setting up machine guns and cannons. "The president thinks he can drop them from the sky."
"What about the mayor?" asked April.
"I think he already considers him a casualty of war."
Smith looked at the setting sun over the buildings across the park. "The Martian Emperor has to know they'd try something like this." Something didn't sit right. "I'm all for trying to catch his hand in the cookie jar. I still think his threats are hollow. But ... but I have to think he's anticipated this."
"The latest instructions were to place the gold bricks in the main fountain. The military has been given instructions to shoot at the craft if they take them. What do you think the Martian trickster has planned?" asked Roosevelt.
"Something clever."
The procession around the metal carriage carrying the gold had filed into the center of the park near the fountain behind the trees. The crowds were being pushed back off the surrounding streets.
A horse-mounted battalion of police paraded down the avenue. "Return to your homes! Curfew is in effect!" Fire bells and alarms began to sound off from around the city.
"Do we sit back and let them pay the ransom?" asked Roosevelt.
"No." Smith took another glance at the mounted artillery on the rooftops. The soldiers were scanning the sky with their binoculars, looking for any sign of the Martian airship.
Roosevelt could see the look in Smith's eyes. "You want to take the fight to the sky?"
"If we can avoid getting shot at," said Smith.
"The machinists finished the modifications a few hours ago. I saw to it while you were in captivity."
Smith turned to April. "Miss Malone, I want you to keep an eye out on things here." He looked over at the fire wagon Felix was sitting on. "See if you can charm a flare gun from the firemen over there. Use it if you see something. We'll watch for your flare."
"There does seem to be a lot of pump trucks here," said April.
"I noticed that, too. I hope they're not expecting a conflagration."
Roosevelt lost count of the fire crews. "Anybody with a badge is trying to get a front-row seat to this boondoggle. Probably hoping the Martians drop a few bars."
Twenty minutes later, Roosevelt looked out the window of the dirigible as it ascended and watched the lot recede. The machinists had cut out a slot on either side of the cabin for him to stick his elephant gun through. He was testing the range of motion he could get with his rifle and how quickly he could reload. Mounted underneath the craft was a belt-fed Gatling gun with a firing button on Smith's control stick.
"How low can you keep this contraption?" asked Roosevelt
"A few dozen feet off the street. Just above the power lines and telegraph cables. Why?"
"I was wondering if it was to our advantage if we masqueraded as a parade float a little lower. I think the citizens of New York won't pay us much bother, but I'm worried about those trigger-happy soldiers on the buildings."
Searchlights had already begun to scan the skies in a sweeping pattern. Despite the curfew, people were outside and standing on the roofs of their buildings, awaiting the arrival of the Martians. Lanterns glowed across the the city.
"You don't think our disguise is enough?" asked Smith.
"Probably a better ruse near ground level. Fewer amateurs will take shots at us, too. I hope."
To make the craft as un-Martian as possible, Smith had a seamstress sew a banner on either side advertising Old Miss Malone's Fresh Soap Co. Roosevelt had an even deeper chuckle when he found out that April had no idea Smith had done that. "I'm sure she'll love the 'Old' title."
"I wanted it to sound like a brand you would trust," said Smith. He thought she'd find the moniker amusing. "I was in a hurry."
"Better hope the Martians see us first," Roosevelt quipped before he climbed into the craft.
Smith guided the craft down 3rd Avenue. People looked up from the sidewalks and streets and waved. Smith was amused by how putting an advertising logo on the craft, even in the middle of a crisis, seemed to make the thing seem like it was no big deal. He'd wished he'd thought of using the ruse earlier. He wondered what other sins he could hide in plain sight behind an advertising slogan.
They reached the intersection of 83rd and 3rd. From there they could see into the park and the searchlights scanning the skies. Below them, a police sergeant guiding traffic and hurrying people home stood in the middle of the street. He looked up at the dirigible, just ten feet above his head, and blew his whistle, trying to direct them on.
Roosevelt leaned out of the window and waved down to the man. "Don't mind us, sergeant. We're undercover," he shouted down. He then flashed him an ID card. The sergeant nodded, touched his finger to his nose and then continued directing traffic. "There you go. All one big happy civil servant family."
Smith pulled the dirigible into a climb.
"What's the matter?" asked Roosevelt. He pulled his lap belt tight.
"Hold on tight." Smith pointed to the sky. "The Martians are here ... and they brought friends," said Smith.
"Good god! It's an invasion!"
A dozen green dots glowed in the sky like an emerald constellation hovering over the city. Higher up and farther out, more green orbs began to appear. To the crowd in the park, the millions of dollars of gold bricks in the middle of the fountain no longer seemed as interesting. The policemen who'd put them in position retreated behind sandbags set up around the perimeter and looked up at the night sky.
April was standing on top of a zoo building. Houdini's firefighter friends had kindly offered her the use of a ladder to get a better view. There had been some arguing before between the different fire crews. One had already connected its pump wagon to a hydrant in the expectation of flames. The Brooklyn crew had argued with them for a few minutes, but the other team stood their ground.
A green disc glowed brighter than the others and grew larger as it descended. A crowd standing on a sidewalk across the street let out a collective gasp as it began to draw near.
April wasn't sure what to believe. She shared Smith's skepticism, but the sight of all the green dots in the sky was overwhelming. She could tell even the firemen and police were nervous. As the disc first began to appear, several people made the sign of the cross. She could understand the biblical overtones.
April felt a chill down her spine. The presence of all the green discs in the sky was overwhelming. What if Smith had been wrong? What if these really were Martian conquerors?
She looked at the tops of the buildings where she knew men with cannons and machine guns lay hidden under blankets. Would one accidental bullet start a war? What would happen if the Martians did to the city what they did to the Statue of Liberty? Would anybody see morning?
The green disc came to a hover several hundred feet over the fountain. A bright beam of light shot out from underneath it and lit up the gold bars in the fountain. The light was dazzling.
The policemen closest to it had to look away from the bright light. The bars began to shimmer in the glow. Smoke started to envelop them.
"They're melting!" shouted a man.
April looked closer. The bars indeed appeared to be evaporating in the middle of the fountain. It was as if the light was dissolving them. Or was it transmitting them like her mythical Saturn Prince? What had seemed like a gag earlier that day when they discussed theatrical magic tricks Houdini could use, the idea of employing some flash pots and a trick vanish and calling it "transmitting" seemed a clever enough ruse. Now she wondered if it wasn't a real technology, commonplace to the Martians.
The stack of bars began to vanish.
Smith pulled a pair of spyglasses from under his seat. Even under magnification, the green discs didn't have any details he could make out.
"My word. Are there any Martians left on Mars?" asked Roosevelt.
"I bet you a nickel that there's something bogus about them," said Smith.
"How do you propose we find out?"
Smith craned his head to the side of the cockpit at a glowing disc directly above the dirigible. "How about taking a pop at one with your gun if I bring you high enough?"
"And if they use their death ray to turn us into cindering skeletons? How do I collect?"
Smith yanked the stick back and brought the craft into a climb. The street below them grew smaller as they passed the top of the buildings. The propellers whined as they pulled them higher.
Roosevelt adjusted the sight on his rifle. "I'll shoot when I'm in range. I'd appreciate it if you took us out of reach as quickly as possible when you hear the gun fire."
"What if you miss?"
Roosevelt kicked the back of Smith's seat. "Quiet."
The disc grew closer but didn't appear much larger. The dirigible reached an almost level height. Roosevelt squeezed the trigger. The rifle let out a loud retort. The cabin of the dirigible jerked backward from the force. Smith resisted the urge to look backward to see if Roosevelt's arm was still attached to his shoulder. He thrust the dirigible into a downward dive. The propellers howled as they tried to push them away.
A loud thud came from above and the whole craft shook.
"The fiends are firing upon us!" shouted Roosevelt. He slammed another bullet into the breach.
Smith straightened the craft out. "Hold on. I think we're fine. I think that was debris."
Smith gave the stick a small shake. Something slid across the top of the air sack and then fell in front of the front window. A large ruptured balloon with a green lantern attached to it plummeted to the ground below.
Roosevelt watched as it smashed into the intersection they'd been hovering over just a few minutes before. "A decoy. Those fakers."
"I'm going to take us to street level and get a better look at the park."
"What about the soldiers?" asked Roosevelt.
"I think they're still looking up. At least I hope so."
Smith slowly drove the dirigible down 68th Street. Roosevelt peered past his shoulder with a set of spyglasses. He could see the flying craft hovering over the fountain in the middle of the park.
"It appears like the gold bars are evaporating."
"Evaporating?" Smith was confused. In his mind the craft would land on top or near the fountain and Martians would load the bars inside and then take off again. Everything they'd done so far fit within his idea of what was possible -- a mixture of advanced technology like his own and trickery. But evaporating? He had no idea how to actually transmit solid matter like that. It was so far beyond even his imagination.
"Some form of electrolysis?" asked Roosevelt. He was also trying to make sense of what was taking place.
"I don't know. Up until now, I've thought these were just clever tricksters."
"The beam just turned off. The gold is gone," said Roosevelt.
The green glowing craft hovered in place and then shot up into the sky at an incredible rate. Machine guns and cannons began to fire from the rooftops. Trace bullets tried to follow the craft. Then it vanished.
"It's gone!" said Roosevelt.
"No. I think they just turned out the lights." Smith pulled the stick back and sent the dirigible into a steep climb. "I'm sure it's up there."
The city fell away beneath them. Roosevelt peered over the edge of the window to see if they were going to be fired upon by the men on the rooftops.
Smith aimed their ship toward the middle of the park where he estimated the craft would be by now. A searchlight illuminated the cabin.
"That's not good," muttered Roosevelt.
A rifle followed by a Gatling gun fired.
"How bulletproof is this damn thing?"
"It only took you one shot to bring me down," said Smith.
"Then good thing I'm not shooting at us."
More searchlights scanned the sky around them. For a brief moment, a large saucer-shaped craft appeared to be illuminated in front of them.
"There they are!" shout Roosevelt.
"Let me try to force them down," said Smith.
He aimed his craft toward the top of the other. A dark shape grew larger. Smith pulled back at the last moment and brought his dirigible over the top of the other ship. The bottom of the cabin scraped over it.
"Ha! It's cloth like ours! Cleverly disguised to look like a metal craft. But no different. I imagine the propellers are enclosed and air ducts control its flight."
"Let's have a technical discussion later on, Schmitty." Roosevelt tried to aim his rifle at the other craft.
"Right, of course." Smith slammed the stick forward and pushed his craft down, on top of the other ship. "I think we took them by surprise!" He turned to grin.
There was a loud pop as a bullet shot a hole in the floor of the cabin.
"Damnation!" Roosevelt swung open the window and aimed at the bulk of the ship under them. "Enough of the light petting. I'm bringing this marauder down!"
He squeezed the trigger and his gun roared. A hole ripped into the top of the other ship. He waited for it to rip all the way apart and fall away beneath them.
"It's not sinking!" said Roosevelt.
"I think they have more chambers."
"You mean they built a better craft than you?" Roosevelt pulled back the rifle chamber and ejected the spent cartridge. He leaned out the window again and aimed at a different part of the craft and fired. A new tear appeared in the skin. The disc began to drop.
Smith jerked his head to the right. A Martian popped out of a hole in the center of the disc and fired a pistol at them. Smith and Roosevelt ducked as the windshield shattered. The Martian lifted a grappling hook from inside the craft and threw it over the arm of Smith's right propeller. Their dirigible shook as they were pulled down by the rapidly descending Martian craft.
The Martian ducked back down. On an impulse, Smith leaped through the broken window and onto the top of the Martian craft. The skin gave way to his feet and he felt himself sinking and then sliding. His fingers grabbed the material to try to stop his fall.
"You damn fool!" Roosevelt climbed into Smith's chair and watched.
Smith ignored him and tried to pull himself up. The slick smooth surface made it difficult to grasp. He dug his fingernails in and pulled as hard as he could. His head and chest slid over the edge of the entrance to the center of the craft. He dove inside and fell to the floor.
The Martian had the front of his helmet pressed onto a periscope. He didn't notice Smith over the sound of his own roaring engine.
The cabin wasn't much larger than Smith's. The controls were quite similar to his own. In fact, he realized, they could have been copies. There was no gold to be found. The craft had lifted too fast before to have it on board. None of it added up.
He pulled himself to his feet and looked for a weapon. He assumed the pistol was still tucked into the Martian's belt. The Martian turned around and faced Smith. The two of them froze.
The Martian was Smith's height. He knew right away this was just a costume. The other man reached for the pistol. Smith kicked at the man's wrist and sent him backward. The helmet cracked against the periscope and stunned the man inside.
The Martian pulled his gun free and pointed it toward Smith. The Martian ripped off the shattered helmet and revealed a very human face. A face Smith recognized.
"I know you!" said Smith.
The man was silent. He pulled back the hammer on the gun.
The unmasked Martian pointed the gun at Smith's forehead. "You knew me, Smith. You knew me."
April had watched the green craft shoot into the sky. Somewhere in the back of her mind a connection clicked. She looked over at the fire crew that had hooked up their hose to the hydrant. A motor sputtered as it turned a pump. Two firemen stood close guard. They all had thick mustaches and looked indistinguishable. A third sat on the bench on the front with reins in hand as if he were ready to command the horses to race off.
What were they pumping? In a flash, she realized that the acids Smith had said could be used to produce the hydrogen gas for the Martian dirigibles could also be used to make a special mixture known as Aqua Regia -- an acid used to dissolve gold. The firemen were pumping the gold away!
Somehow the so-called Martian Emperor had rigged the fountain to fill with acid beforehand. The firemen themselves could have done it weeks earlier disguised as a work crew. She looked at the hundreds of policemen and soldiers standing around the fountain. How better to get the gold away than to pump it away beneath their feet through lead pipes while they stared at the sky?
The fake firemen put on thick rubber gloves and detached the firehose from the large tank. They poured a bucket of liquid over the nozzle and then tossed it to the ground. The two men hopped onto the pump wagon. April realized they were about to get away.
She ran from the roof to the ladder and climbed down. The fireman piloting the carriage called to the horses and started driving them away from the park. The crowd ignored them and gasped as they saw two aircraft falling from the sky.
Search lights on top of the surrounding buildings illuminated the dirigibles as they descended. April momentarily forgot about the pump truck as she looked up. Smith and Roosevelt were falling!
The cabin shook violently as it crashed into the park below. Smith was thrown into the Martian Emperor and smashed the side of his own head on the wall of the cabin. The lights went out for a moment, and he could feel the other man shove past him. Something struck him on the side of the head, and he blacked out for what felt like a brief moment.
There was a loud crash as his own dirigible fell on top of the other craft. Smith tried to find his way out of the cabin in the darkness. Somewhere he could hear Roosevelt cursing.
He saw a faint light coming from a small tube. Smith climbed into it and pulled himself vertically along a series of rungs. He fell onto the half-deflated air bag of the fake Martian aircraft and slid down into the grass of the park. A crowd of policemen and citizens had gathered around to gawk at the crashed vehicles.
Smith pulled himself to his feet. "Where is he?" He looked at the faces of the people. They didn't understand who he meant. Smith realized that without his helmet, the Martian Emperor could have escaped right among them. His suit would have looked like a fireman's overalls in the commotion.
There was a loud thud as Roosevelt jumped from the cabin above and landed on the air bag behind Smith. "Did you get the fiend?"
Smith surveyed the faces of the crowd. "He's out there, somewhere."
A panting official pushed his way to the front of the bystanders. "Where's the gold?" He turned to Roosevelt. "Where's the gold?"
"It's not here," said Smith. He motioned to the craft. "Look for yourself." He turned his eyes to the sky. The green dots were beginning to drift away in the wind. He shook his head.
"Smith!" came a female shout from the crowd.
Smith pushed his way through the policemen and officials. Some of them half-heartedly tried to grab him to ask questions. He swatted away their hands and tried to find April.
He saw her silky dark hair and pushed a man out of the way. He pulled her into his arms.
"You fools," she said. "Of all the stupid things."
"We lost the gold." His voice was defeated.
April pulled herself away and shook her head. "No. They took it into a firetruck. They're trying to make it down 5th right now!"
Smith turned to the path that led to the street. He called over his shoulder as he broke out into a run. "Teddy! We can still get them!"
Roosevelt slid to the grass and chased after Smith. He held his rifle over the crowd and shouted at them to keep clear. They moved aside and let him past. Over by a shrub, he saw Felix and Houdini watching Brutus as he devoured the greenery. "I'm commandeering your rhinoceros!"
Smith ran into the street and saw the pump truck racing away. He tried to catch up with them but wasn't fast enough. He looked for a horse but there was none to be found. He was about to curse himself when he heard the sound of galloping thunder behind him. Smith did a double take.
"Get on!" shouted Roosevelt from atop Brutus.
Smith tried to hold on to Roosevelt as he charged the rhino toward the pump wagon. "Couldn't you find something a little more domestic?"
"What's the matter with Brutus?"
Smith struggled to keep his balance. The animal was building momentum as it headed down 5th Avenue. It seemed to be drawn by the sound of the bell on the fire wagon and understood where it was supposed to go.
People ran to the sidewalks as they saw the enormous beast charging down the middle of the street. Carriages came to a stop. A frightened horse jumped into a flower bed.
Smith could see the Martin Emperor on the back of the wagon, looking back at them. His face was so familiar, yet he couldn't quite place it. The man turned and moved to the front of the wagon.
He shouted to Roosevelt, "That's the Martian Emperor."
"Which one?"
A different fireman climbed to the back of the wagon and stared them down.
Roosevelt aimed his rifle over the rhino's bucking snout. "I got the shot."
"No!" shouted Smith. "Don't kill him. And if you hit the tank, we'll all be covered in acid! They used it to dissolve the gold. It'll be spilled out over the street."
"I don't know how much longer Brutus can hold out."
Almost as if he sensed the challenge, the rhinoceros let out a burst of speed and brought them near the back of the wagon. When they were just a few feet away, a fireman pulled an ax from a hook and swung it at the beast's head. The blade grazed overtop the horn. The animal sensed the blow and tossed its massive head into the back side of the wagon, sending it off its left wheels momentarily.
The motion tossed Smith into the air. He slid down the back of the creature. He squeezed his thighs around the waist and was bucked forward. He collided with Roosevelt.
"Mind yourself!" said Roosevelt.
The fireman reached the ax back to swing again. Roosevelt twisted his rifle around and swung the stock at the other man. It collided with the ax.
The wagon driver pulled the reins to the right and drove them over a sidewalk and down another road. Brutus tried to follow but had to dodge out of the way of a lamp post. His momentum carried him across the street.
"Watch out!" Roosevelt saw they were headed for a fenced-up alley.
The rhinoceros burst through the planks. A heavy beam just above the animal's head slammed into Roosevelt's chest. He flew backward into Smith. The two men collapsed to the ground in a pile on top of the splintered wood.
Brutus came to a stop in the narrow alley and stomped open a crate filled with produce. He started to chomp several heads of lettuce.
Smith and Roosevelt climbed to their feet. Sore and bruised, neither one had broken any bones. They looked down the street but the fire wagon was gone.
"Did you see his face?" asked Smith.
"The Martian Emperor? I don't think so."
Roosevelt kicked a wooden plank. "We've lost them now. In minutes, they could be anywhere."
"But they're not headed just anywhere. They took the gold the way they did because they knew their real airship wouldn't be able to maneuver with that much weight. They're headed toward their hideout."
"We've searched the factories and buildings for a dynamo or any place they could launch their craft and make their chemicals. Nothing. It's as if it's invisible like their fortress," said Roosevelt.
Smith's eyes lit up. "Wait! We've been so stupid. I know where they're headed! I know where their dynamo is and all the rest. Of all the stupid things. It's so obvious."
"What?" asked Roosevelt. "What's so obvious?"
"They're headed to Phobos!"
Roosevelt shook his head. "Have you gone mad from all the bumps?"
"No. Those men who were burned by the acid. The men on the firetruck. There's a reason nobody around here knows anything about them. There's a reason we haven't found their lair. We've had the city checked?"
"Even the outer cities and New Jersey. Nothing."
"But we were looking for a factory or a big building?" asked Smith.
"Yes?"
"But we didn't look for one that moved! Phobos is the name of their ship! Maybe not the name it's registered under. But I'm sure that's what they meant. Those men are foreign sailors. The Martian Emperor's real secret whereabouts is a ship docked somewhere on Manhattan!"
"I've got to notify the Navy immediately and form some kind of blockade!"
Smith nodded and Roosevelt ran off to find the military officials so they could semaphore the ships in the harbor.
Brutus broke open another crate and started eating some sprouts. Smith wasn't sure if he should try using the rhinoceros as a steed. The animal seemed content to stay in the alley and devour the produce.
There was a clatter as April brought the carriage to a stop in the street behind them. "They're heading to the docks!"
Smith climbed aboard. "Yes! How did you know? But which one?"
She cracked the reins and sent the horses into a gallop. "I have a hunch."
Smith had barely sat down on the bench next to April before she sent the carriage racing down 5th Avenue. They passed the intersection he'd seen the pump truck turn into.
"They went that way!" said Smith.
"Only to lose you." She steered the horses down the middle of the avenue.
Oncoming traffic veered toward the far side of the street to avoid them. Men shouted angry insults.
Smith eyed the carriage they were in. "Do I want to ask?"
"We made a polite request," said Felix from the back of the carriage.
Smith turned around and saw the hairy dwarf and Harry holding on for dear life. Harry had managed to wipe most of the green dye off, but his ears were still green.
April charged through an intersection. A police sergeant blew an angry whistle at them. He did a double take when he saw the two riders clinging to the back.
"Does anybody have a weapon?" Smith asked.
Harry shouted over the sound of the horses' hooves hitting the pavement, "Only our wits!"
"In a word, no," said Felix.
April pushed his umbrella toward him. Smith grabbed it and checked the amount of rocket fuel still left and then sat back down and held on. He wasn't sure which was worse, Brutus the rhino's bucking or April's mad-woman weaving through traffic. She turned onto 34th Street and he almost fell off the bench.
"Where are we headed?"
"Pier 43," she said.
"Why?"
"I asked one of the naval men what the largest ship in port was that didn't belong to them. He mentioned a hospital ship."
"A hospital ship?"
"The Adrestria. It's supposed to be a German hospital ship," said April.
"Adrestria? As in the Greek goddess?"
"A goddess of war. Sister of Phobos," said April.
"They must have rechristened the ship that! Of course. The man in the opium den was too confused to remember the cover name. Miss Malone, you're brilliant!"
Tall masts were visible over the rooftops ahead. April turned south on 12th. They passed rows of old warehouses that lined the Hudson River. Smith was certain they'd been searched. The irony was the ship was right behind them, out in the open. The airship could have been launched from the decks in the still of the night and nobody would have noticed, especially if they had their smokestack spewing. Smith cursed himself for not having thought of that.
"There!" April pointed to a white ship pulling away from the wharf.
"Take us onto the pier!" The ship was already a hundred feet away from the dock. Smith had no idea what he could do to stop it.
The carriage raced down the wooden pier. Sailors and longshoremen shouted at them to slow down. April ignored them and took the carriage all the way to the end.
"Isn't that the mayor?" shouted Houdini.
They looked to the side and saw a scruffy man with his wrists tied walking across the dock in a confused state. Houdini jumped off the back to help him.
Smith hopped down and stood at the edge of the dock and tried to figure out what to do about the fleeing boat. He glanced down at his umbrella. There was enough fuel for him to make it. But then what? There had to be at least twenty crewmen on board.
White smoke billowed out of the smokestack as the ship's boilers pushed the steam engine to top speed. Smith could also hear the low-pitched sound of a dynamo. The Martian Emperor had likely made some kind of hybrid power plant. Smith suspected it would be able to outrun any blockade.
Smith lifted the umbrella and pointed it over the ship. He turned the handle and it sprung open.
"No!" shouted April.
"I don't have a choice. He's going to get away, and it's my fault."
Flames shot out of the umbrella, and Smith began to lift off the ground. Something jumped onto his back.
"I can't let you go alone," said Felix as he clung to his shoulders.
They were too far off the ground for Smith to protest.
They flew across the Hudson like an obnoxious firework. The sparks and the smoke from the rockets lit up the night around them. Smith arced the umbrella toward the ship.
"Ze men. They are jumping!" said Felix.
"What?" Smith was too focused on making sure they landed on the deck and not the river. Between the flames of his umbrella, he saw several men diving into the water. They must have thought the rocket-propelled umbrella was some kind of missile. But the men seemed even more afraid than that. Smith realized they must have been in a hurry to pull out of port. There had to have been an accident.
"Felix, can you swim?"
"Oui?"
"Jump!"
The wolf man dove into the water. Without his weight, Smith accelerated toward the ship. He let go of the umbrella. The flaming rocket shot toward the ship and ignited the leaking hydrogen. The last thing he saw before he blacked out was a bright ball of fire and the silhouettes of men diving into the water.
When Smith came to, he was lying on a hospital bed. He panicked for a moment when he couldn't feel his feet. He looked down and saw that April had fallen asleep on them as she sat in a chair.
"They tried to remove her. They won't make that mistake again." Roosevelt pulled up another chair and sat next to Smith's bed. "I know you have intermittent amnesia. How much do you recall?"
"Everything until the explosion. Felix?"
"Back at Coney Island. Houdini as well. It was he who pulled you out of the water. Extraordinary young man."
"What about the Martian Emperor?"
"We captured several of his men. They said he died in the explosion. A likely story. They said he's actually the Viscount Von Marcus. Our European allies say that's probably a dubious alias. We're trying to track down his operations over there to find out more. The sailors only seem to know a little. They didn't have much grasp of what he was up to. Typical Hessian obedience. After Miss Malone explained the chemical process, the government was able to get its gold back from the tank. The Navy also found some interesting things to look at on that ship. I didn't point out to them that they looked a lot like some of your gadgets ...."
Smith bit his lip. "This man, he looked familiar. But I don't know why. It's as if he managed to copy many of my ideas. I've used lots of different machinists to help build my toys, but I always try to separate the work so no one person has the whole picture. Unless ..." his voice trailed off.
"We've found a number of devices he used to corrupt the telegraph system. A disturbing number. If anything, this man had a gift for espionage. The men from the Navy are very interested in that. It's embarrassing how easily it was done." He eyed Smith. "Makes you wonder who else might have done such a thing ...."
"I'm sure they had good reason." Smith paused for a moment. "But I suspect the Martian Emperor felt the same way. This Von Marcus, or whatever, despite the theatrics. He managed to do quite a lot without firing a shot. I think he may have been after more than just the gold."
"Such as?"
"He's a man who has read too much Jules Verne, for certain. But he reminds me of a younger version of myself. I, too, had dreams of unifying the world," said Smith.
"What happened?"
"I realized that you can't do that by force. Men have to work together as individuals, not at the point of a gun. Sadly, I fear this is an ideal that is being forgotten. I think we're in for dark times as more men try to force others into their vision of peace and unity. This Martian Emperor was just the beginning. And I worry what he'll do next time if he's still alive." Smith stared out the window. He was still hazy and out of sorts. A memory came back to him. "I started a society once, a salon of sorts. The goal was the scientific unity of man. It sounded like a grandiose idea. But I made a mistake. Thomas tried to explain it to me. But I wouldn't listen. I was so headstrong and arrogant back then. I believed that a just society could be created by using force to make men act justly. But that's a delusion as old as the pharaohs. Thomas tried to make me understand that a just society is one that allows men to act justly. The first fails by coercion. Look in any prison. The second succeeds by understanding that most men want to live in a just society." Smith waved at the window and the buildings outside. "Most of those people out there want to live in a city free of corruption and crime. Give them that and the world will really prosper. You don't elevate the society by putting a different set of crooks in charge to steal and put their boots on our necks. You elevate society by not putting the crooks in charge. You keep the ones out of power who would sell their votes or betray their office by handing out jobs and using public debt to buy favor." Smith looked back to Roosevelt. "I'm sorry. You know all this. I forgot who I was talking to."
Roosevelt nodded. "I see progress. Fleeting at times. But it's there. Back to the Viscount. You have no recollection of who he is?"
Smith shook his head.
"Not a lost relative?"
"I have none other than my little sister."
Roosevelt tilted his head toward April. "Does she know why you take your long sleeps?"
"No. I don't want to burden her with it. It's too much for me to bear at times."
"Sometimes in not letting people know our burdens, we burden them even more by forcing them to carry us, as well," said Roosevelt.
"I know. I know."
"She thinks the world of you."
"I'm quite fond of her." Smith tried to avoid looking down at her sleeping form.
"Fond? There's a funny word, Schmitty. When I see you two look at each other, 'fond' isn't exactly the word I'd use. It's the word someone uses to hide a deeper feeling."
Smith said nothing.
"That look is rare, Smith. You're both two exceptional individuals."
"I'm a little too old for her, don't you think?"
"You're a little too old for Methuselah's mother. I don't think she would care."
"There's just too much to deal with. Now is not the right time."
"Unlike you, she can't wait forever. She might try, but in the end, she's like the rest of us. It would be cruel for you to make her do so."
"I know. I know. I think I ... I mean I know ... I know I love her. I knew it the moment I stepped out of my chamber. I knew it before I knew her name. I knew it even in the deepest bout of amnesia." Smith lowered his voice. "I knew it when I slept. I dreamed about her. Even though I never dream when I take those long sleeps." Smith stared up at the ceiling. "I need a nap. Then I need to get back to my train."
"I'll leave you be." Roosevelt patted Smith on the head and then shut the door behind him.
Smith traced patterns in the ceiling and tried to make sense of things. His eyes drifted down to April. He wanted to say something to wake her. He wanted to see her brilliant green eyes gaze back at him. He wanted to tell her what he just told Roosevelt. Instead, he closed his eyes.
At the foot of his bed, April pretended to sleep while a tear rolled down her cheek.
Arnaud Sylvestre sat in the king-sized bed of the master suite of the Hotel Flatrock and looked through a telescope and out the terrace window at the city. It wasn't the masterful view he had from his mirror chamber on Park Avenue, but that was merely meant as a piece of scenery to confound Smith. The view here was much more important to him. He was both frustrated and delighted that his mentor finally unraveled the hoax. Frustrated that his plot, both simple and absurd, didn't work out the way he had planned. But in a small way, delighted that Smith was able to see through it despite the obstructions thrown in his path. Besting Smith in that way was a distraction. Arnaud knew it was the kind of trivial and petty thing a student ultimately tries to pull to prove that he has surpassed his master and only satisfies the ego. But he tried anyway and sacrificed his attention to his plan. Where Smith was a master of machines, Arnaud's gifts were in understanding man. The intellectual side of him knew that seeing Smith defeated would bring him more sadness than delight. Words couldn't measure how much he respected the Promethean fire of the man's intellect. Nor could they describe how much Arnaud felt Smith wasted them on his toys and hobbies and devotion to his sickly sister locked away in her hibernation vault.
When he climbed ashore from the sinking ship, he was filled with rage. At first he thought his fury was simply the failure of his machinations and the great cost of the ploy. As he recuperated and made his plans to return to Europe to start anew, he had a deeper realization, one that continued to sadden him. He was a wealthy man and could launch scores of ventures like the one he'd tried. Like Smith, he had all the time in the world to see to it that his plans eventually succeeded -- and next time he'd spend less time trying to distract Smith with a pointless sideshow. What bothered him most was the look on Smith's face when his helmet came off. None. There was a glimmer of recognition when Smith saw his face but only that. There was no connection. There was no emotional reaction. There was no spark. To Smith, he was nothing more than a vaguely familiar shape. It had been a long time, for sure. Arnaud also made use of Smith's life-extending -- or postponing -- chamber technology, and his face didn't betray his own years. But still ....
Arnaud adjusted the eyepiece and looked through the hospital window once more. His chest hurt from the exertion, but he wouldn't be satisfied until he saw the image again. He watched Smith gaze down at the green-eyed young lady and was filled with envy. Arnaud knew that Smith's lapses of amnesia caused great missing sections of his life and even knowledge of relationships -- a vulnerability that Arnaud had learned to exploit to personal benefit. But that didn't make him feel any better for it. He could tell that even in his darkest bouts, Smith would still recognize and know that woman meant something special to him. There was an obvious connection on a cellular level. A connection Arnaud thought he had and now realized he'd irrevocably severed.
Arnaud suspected that had he succeeded, his triumph would have been hollow if Smith didn't appreciate the true identity of the man who had accomplished it and their relationship to each other. It was a guilty realization. Up until recently, Arnaud had thought his intentions were pure: the unification of mankind under any means necessary. Now he knew it was more subtle than that. He must also prove Smith wrong and have him know it. And he must earn Smith's respect in the process.
He got out of bed and swept the telescope aside with an angry strike, shattering the glass lenses on the wooden floor. His ribcage seared in pain, but he ignored it. An attendant came running from the salon. Arnaud spoke sharply to the man and they were on a carriage within the hour, passage booked to Europe on the fastest vessel he could charter. There was much to be done. His mistake had been thinking he had all the time in the world. He could sit there and watch Smith through his telescope and pretend the connection wasn't lost, or he could set about on his grander vision and make the man realize, no, long for, the connection he once had with his protege. Plans needed to be made. Machines had to be built. Men were to be recruited. The Emperor of the Sky's reign was truly about to begin.
Final note
I apologize to the mysterious Smith for any errors or omissions in telling his story. Any mistakes are mine and not his.
I've endeavored to make this story as accurate as possible; and still tell a wild adventure involving airships, saucer men and wolf-man dwarves. I've taken a certain amount of license with the historical figures described, but have done my best to reflect who they were at this interesting period of time. As far as the technology described, I've used patent searches, court documents and scans of trade journals to describe machines and devices that very well could have existed during that period.
Origins are a funny thing. French magician and inventor Eugene Robert-Houdin had electric lights on display decades before Edison turned on his first light switch. There are hundreds of other examples of inventions that have no fixed point of origin. Where necessary I've taken tremendous liberties. Where possible, I've relied upon known historical facts.
Sincerely,
Andrew Mayne
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