When the World Shook: Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and ArbuthnotHaggard, H. Rider (Henry Rider)
Science
When the World Shook: Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot
Haggard, H. Rider (Henry Rider)
Adventure stories; Science fiction
As he spoke, a motor-bus rumbled past. Another flash and explosion. A
man, walking with his arms round the waist of a girl just ahead of us;
seemed to be tossed up and to melt. The girl fell in a heap on the
pavement; somehow her head and her feet had come quite close together
and yet she appeared to be sitting down. The motor-bus burst into
fragments and its passengers hurtled through the air, mere hideous
lumps that had been men and women. The head of one of them came dancing
down the pavement towards us, a cigar still stuck in the corner of its
mouth.
“Yes, this is war,” said Oro. “It makes me young again to see it. But
does this city of yours understand?”
We watched a while. A crowd gathered. Policemen ran up, ambulances
came. The place was cleared, and all that was left they carried away. A
few minutes later another man passed by with his arm round the waist of
another girl. Another motor-bus rumbled up, and, avoiding the hole in
the roadway, travelled on, its conductor keeping a keen look-out for
fares.
The street was cleared by the police; the airship continued its course,
spawning bombs in the distance, and vanished. The incident was closed.
“Let us go home,” said Oro. “I have seen enough of your great and
wonderful city. I would rest in the quiet of Nyo and think.”
The next thing that I remember was the voice of Bastin, saying:
“If you don’t mind, Arbuthnot, I wish that you would get up. The
Glittering Lady (he still called her that) is coming here to have a
talk with me which I should prefer to be private. Excuse me for
disturbing you, but you have overslept yourself; indeed, I think it
must be nine o’clock, so far as I can judge by the sun, for my watch is
very erratic now, ever since Bickley tried to clean it.”
“I am sorry, my dear fellow,” I said sleepily, “but do you know I
thought I was in London—in fact, I could swear that I have been there.”
“Then,” interrupted Bickley, who had followed Bastin into the hut,
giving me that doubtful glance with which I was now familiar, “I wish
to goodness that you had brought back an evening paper with you.”
A night or two later I was again suddenly awakened to feel that Oro was
approaching. He appeared like a ghost in the bright moonlight, greeted
me, and said:
“Tonight, Humphrey, we must make another journey. I would visit the
seat of the war.”
“I do not wish to go,” I said feebly.
“What you wish does not matter,” he replied. “_I_ wish that you should
go, and therefore you must.”
“Listen, Oro,” I exclaimed. “I do not like this business; it seems
dangerous to me.”
“There is no danger if you are obedient, Humphrey.”
“I think there is. I do not understand what happens. Do you make use of
what the Lady Yva called the Fourth Dimension, so that our bodies pass
over the seas and through mountains, like the vibrations of our
Wireless, of which I was speaking to you?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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