Chapter 1

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The Undersea Tube

BY L. TAYLOR HANSEN

Classic Reprint from AMAZING STORIES, Nov., 1929

Copyright, 1929, by E. P. Incorporated

If my friend the engineer had not told me the Tube was dangerous, I
would not have bought a ticket on that fatal night, and the world would
never have learned the story of the Golden Cavern and the City of the
Dead. Having therefore, according to universal custom, first made my
report as the sole survivor of the much-discussed Undersea Tube disaster
to the International Committee for the Investigation of Disasters, I am
now ready to outline that story for the world. Naturally I am aware of
the many wild tales and rumors that have been circulated ever since the
accident, but I must ask my readers to bear with me while I attempt to
briefly sketch, not only the tremendous difficulties to be overcome by
the engineers, but also the wind-propulsion theory which was made use of
in this undertaking; because it is only by understanding something of
these two phases of the Tube’s engineering problems that one can
understand the accident and its subsequent revelations.

It will be recalled by those who have not allowed their view of modern
history to become too hazy, that the close of the twentieth century saw
a dream of the engineering world at last realized–the completion of the
long-heralded undersea railroad. It will also be recalled that the
engineers in charge of this stupendous undertaking were greatly
encouraged by the signal success of the first tube under the English
Channel, joining England and France by rail. However, it was from the
second tube across the Channel and the tube connecting Montreal to New
York, as well as the one connecting New York and Chicago, that they
obtained some of their then radical ideas concerning the use of wind
power for propulsion. Therefore, before the Undersea Tube had been
completed, the engineers in charge had decided to make use of the new
method in the world’s longest tunnel, and upon that decision work was
immediately commenced upon the blue-prints for the great air pumps that
were to rise at the two ends–Liverpool and New York. However, I will
touch upon the theory of wind-propulsion later and after the manner in
which it was explained to me.

It will be recalled that after great ceremonies, the Tube was begun
simultaneously at the two terminating cities and proceeded through solid
rock–low enough below the ocean floor to overcome the terrible pressure
of the body of water over it, and yet close enough to the sea to
overcome the intensity of subterranean heat. Needless to say, it was an
extremely hazardous undertaking, despite the very careful surveys that
had been made, for the little parties of workmen could never tell when
they would strike a crack or an unexpected crevice that would let down
upon them with a terrible rush, the waters of the Atlantic. But hazard
is adventure, and as the two little groups of laborers dug toward each
other, the eyes of the press followed them with more persistent interest
than it has ever followed the daily toil of any man or group of men,
either before or since.

* * * * *

Once the world was startled by the “extree-ee–” announcing that the
English group had broken into an extinct volcano, whose upper end had
apparently been sealed ages before, for it contained not water but
air–curiously close and choking perhaps, but at least it was not the
watery deluge of death. And then came the great discovery. No one who
lived through that time will forget the thrill that quickened the pulse
of mankind when the American group digging through a seam of old lava
under what scientists call the “ancient ridge,” broke into a sealed
cavern which gleamed in the probing flashlights of the workers like the
scintillating points of a thousand diamonds. But when they found the
jeweled casket, through whose glass top they peered curiously down upon
the white body of a beautiful woman, partly draped in the ripples of her
heavy, red hair, the world gasped and wondered. As every school child
knows, the casket was opened by curious scientists, who flocked into the
tube from the length of the world, but at the first exposure to the air,
the strange liquid that had protected the body vanished, leaving in the
casket not the white figure, but only a crumbling mass of grey dust. But
the questions that the finding of the cave had raised remained
unanswered.

Who was this woman? How did she get into the sealed cavern? If she had
been the court favorite of that mythical kingdom, now sunk beneath the
waves, and had been disposed of in court intrigue, why would her
murderers have buried her in such a casket? How had she been killed? An
unknown poison? Perhaps she had been a favorite slave of the monarch.
This view gained many converts among the archaeologists who argued that
from all the evidence we have available, the race carrying the Iberian
or Proto-Egyptian culture, long thought to have been the true refugees
from sinking Atlantis, were a slight dark-haired race. Therefore this
woman must have been a captive. Geologists, analyzing the lava,
announced that it had hardened in air and not in water, while
anthropologists classed the skull of the woman as essentially more
modern than either the Neanderthal or Cro-Magnon types. But the
engineers, secretly fuming at the delay, finally managed to fill up the
cave and press on with their drills.