“Holy God,” whispered Johnny, reaching his friend’s side and gazing up at the blue corona that had taken station directly above. A second luminous shape rose from the mist and spiraled lazily toward their position, falling into an orbit around the first.
“Zeb, we need to run.”
“No, Johnny. Don’t you see? It’s not Martians at all.”
Suddenly a finger of brilliant light stabbed down and transfixed them. Primal panic took over and Johnny could think of nothing but the need to flee. He scrambled out of the circle of light and dashed for the tree line, but skidded to a halt when he realized Zeb wasn’t beside him. His friend remained fixed in place, staring up at the light as though he were gazing at a window into heaven itself.
“Zeb! Get over—” A bloom of pain, more intense than anything he could possibly imagine, stole the cry from his lips. Every fiber of his body seemed to on fire, and his head felt like a balloon about to burst. He dropped to the ground, writhing in a fetal curl, consumed by the agony.
Time ceased to have any meaning for him as he lay there. In fact, only a few seconds passed before the sky exploded.
The brilliant but focused spotlight became a supernova that filled the night from horizon to horizon. A blast of intense heat buffeted Johnny, but it was a welcome change from the other sensation, which had ceased at the moment of the blast. Flaming debris rained from the heavens, but Johnny could only lay motionless, quivering like a jellyfish washed up on a beach, as the memory of the assault slowly dribbled out of his nervous system. It was an oddly pleasant feeling.
Gradually, other sights and sounds began filtering into his perceptions and it occurred to him that perhaps he should flee. “Zeb!” he hissed, but no answer came.
He struggled to rise, but found that he could only move his left arm. His other extremities were held fast, and as he struggled to free himself, he realized that it was the earth itself that held him prisoner. He was half buried in the ground, as surely as if someone had dug a pit, thrown him in, and then packed the dirt down upon him.
“Zeb, help me!” He made no effort to whisper now. In a panic, he thrashed about, loosening the soil beneath him enough to wrestle his other arm free and prop himself up. “Zeb!”
A few fires still burned on the ground around him, but their dim glow revealed no trace of his friend. In fact, the entire area where Zeb had been standing was gone…or rather changed. Where there had once been a sloping hillside, there was now an abrupt drop-off, falling perhaps fifteen feet. The ground below was completely flat and smooth; aside from the smoldering debris, there was not so much as a blade of grass, and no sign at all of Zeb.
Johnny was still struggling, still crying out for his friend, when more of the wraiths emerged from the mist.
Three days later, a railroad detective rousted a young man from a freight car bound for Baltimore. The unresponsive deadhead sustained a nasty wound in the course of his ejection, which led to a brief hospitalization, followed by an even longer convalescence in a sanatorium. It would be two weeks before the boy would be able to identify himself as John Perdue from central Pennsylvania. He had no memory of what had happened during those lost days, and no idea what had become of his friend Zeb Hathaway.
The Road to Tomorrow
What will the world be like one hundred years from now? Former Presidential Science Advisor Findlay Newcombe and adventure writer David “Dodge” Dalton answer your questions here, every week.
Bill C. from Topeka, Kansas writes: Dodge, I love the Captain Falcon adventures. Last year, Captain Falcon stopped the Skull Brigade from using their death ray to destroy the Statue of Liberty. A lot of my favorite stories have things like heat rays and such, so I want to know: Are death rays real?
DD: Thanks for the question, Bill. Here’s what Dr. Newcombe has to say about death rays.
FN: “Death rays” are not only real, but they’re around us all the time. If you’ve ever gotten a nasty sunburn, then you’ve been exposed to a type of “death ray,” namely ultraviolet radiation from the sun. Solar radiation — literally rays — appear to us mostly as visible light, but there are also invisible rays that can burn your skin, and if you’re exposed to them long enough, give you second degree burns. Light, visible and invisible, is also heat, and if you know how to focus it, such as with a lens or parabolic mirror, you can create your own heat ray.
The ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes allegedly created a giant mirror which was used to focus the sun’s rays as a weapon to burn enemy ships. Unfortunately, as any mischievous boy who’s ever tried to burn an anthill with a magnifying glass knows, you have to position your lensing device at a precise distance from the target. Move just a little bit closer or further away, and your death ray simply becomes a very bright light.
Using the sun’s light to power a heat ray also underscores one of the big limitations of man-made death rays, namely energy. In order to produce an electrical lamp capable of creating enough energy to be focused into a death ray, we would need a huge amount of power, so much that the copper wires transmitting the electricity would probably melt long before we achieved any kind of useful result. In short, it’s very unlikely that we will ever see a handheld ray gun weapon. Larger weapons, like the one the Skull Brigade tried to create in the Captain Falcon story, or those used by the Martian invaders in H.G. Wells’ novel War of the Worlds, are more plausible, but again the energy requirements would be enormous. If you want to take over the world, skip the death rays, and stick to high explosives.
Jim P. from Burden Valley, Pennsylvania writes: Mr. Dodge, there are a lot of strange things going on here in the valley. Strange lights in the sky and noises in the woods. Folks say there’s a ghost train that runs the rails late at night and then vanishes. And worst of all, my brother and his friend disappeared a few weeks ago. My brother turned up hunerts (sic) of miles away with amnesia and his friend is still missing. Everyone thinks they ran away and got into trouble, but I think they were captured by ghosts, or mebbe (sic) Martians. Can you please send Captain Falcon out here to look into it?
DD: Jim, that sure sounds like something Falcon would have been keen to investigate back when he was fighting evil. And we’re very sorry about what happened to your brother and his friend, but I think we can ease some of your worries. Here’s what Dr. Newcombe has to say about ghosts trains, strange lights and sounds, and Martian invaders.
FN: Scientists believe in the principle of Occam’s Razor, which briefly states that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one, or put another way, when you hear hoofbeats, you think horses, not zebras.
When you hear weird noises at night, or see strange objects in the sky, there are any number of possible explanations. If you were to make a list of those explanations, and then put them in order from most to least likely, you’d find that there are a lot of more probable explanations for the phenomena than Martians or ghosts. But thousands of years of superstition have caused us to leap to the opposite, most unlikely conclusions.
That’s not to say that we can completely dismiss the possibility of phantoms or visiting spacemen; after all, until we can prove otherwise, anything is possible. But let’s consider a few facts.
First, ghosts. As a matter of science, nothing ever truly goes away. The same may be true of the energy that keeps us alive. However, physics also tells us that energy continues to descend toward entropy — a state where the energy is essentially useless. That’s why the coals of a fire will eventually go cold. We should expect the same to be true of the energy that our bodies produce. Once we die, the energy radiates away.