Land to the North - Chapter Seven

(Blogger's note: Earlier chapters follow this.)

Eric was right! Unless we both had gone crazy, and given the circumstances that seemed like a real possibility, it was suddenly much warmer, nearly tropical. I reached for the compass that lay on the bottom of the boat, warm water washing over it and retreating with the motion of the waves. I turned it over and looked at the needle. It was spinning wildly as if we were standing over a lodestone deposit.

Eric nodded as he saw that and said, "There is no way that we could have drifted into the tropics and still be alive. We’re talking about thousands of miles."

It wasn’t until then that I realized what the warmth and the fog meant. I felt the excitement course through me like an electrical charge. I was light headed with a stomach that was flipping over. I reached out and grabbed his arms.

"We’ve done it," I shouted.

He nodded happily and shouted right back. "Of course we’ve done it. We had the tools and we had the knowledge."

"A drink," I said. "A drink in celebration." I reached inside my coat for the flask and realized just how hot it was. My shirt was soaked with sweat. I laughed and stripped the heavy parka. I wiped a hand over my face and stared at the perspiration staining my palm.

"Eighty or ninety degrees," he said. "With humidity to match that."

I pulled the top off the flask and held it up high. I was about to speak when the words deserted me. I had planned to christen our discovery Jansenland or may Olafland when I realized that we had discovered nothing, other than a warm passage. A warm water passage that no one had ever written about with any authority.

But I was thirsty, and I wasn’t going to let a technicality dampen the excitement, so I said, "To us. Discoverers of the land to the north."

I took a deep drink and felt the liquor burn its way to my stomach.

Solemnly, Eric took my flask and grinned at me. He too, held it high, but said, "We have discovered no land. Yet. But to us, anyway, two of the greatest adventurers who ever lived.

I liked the sound of that. We could call ourselves adventurers because that was what we were. Explorers suggested that we were in virgin territory, but adventurers implied no such thing.

I took the flask back and said, "To us then. Adventurers."

As I capped the flask, I asked, "And now what?"

"I would suggest that we try to get our bearings and figure out what is going on. The maps and compass are of no use now. We need to see the sun and the stars so that we can get a navigational fix."

I nodded and looked upward. There seemed to be a bright ball hanging overheard just visible through the mist. I thought of the sun on a foggy day, but this, somehow, didn’t seem to be big enough or bright enough to be the sun.

I turned my head, but could see nothing near me. I reached over the side of the boat and let my fingers drag in the water. It was quite warm and I lifted them to my lips. The water was fresh, not brackish.

"This is a river," I said.

"A river?" said Eric. "That’s impossible."

"This water is fresh," I said. "It’s not salt water and it’s not cold water. We’ve entered some kind of inland waterway."

"But the current would take us toward the ocean," he said. "There is no way that we could drift into a river from the ocean."

"Are you suggesting the current carried us here?"

"No. That makes less sense than anything else. I don’t know what to think," he said.

Which puzzled me somewhat. He was supposed to be the expert on finding the way into the Inner Earth. It was his family who had visited there before, yet, here he was, denying what we were seeing, or feeling, or experiencing ourselves. His attitude was a bit frightening, given the circumstances.

As we continued to drift, I became aware of the sound of the water against stone. A quiet, wet slapping that penetrated the fog and echoed around us. We had been talking in quiet voices, as if afraid of something hidden behind the mist, but I suddenly shouted, "Hello!"

A split second later my voice bounced back to me as it reverberated around.

"We’re in a cave!" said Eric, amazed.

I shouted again and that seemed to confirm it. Somehow we had floated into a giant cave that was hidden in mist. And then I noticed something else. There was a low, quiet rumbling, like heavy machinery or artillery in the distance. An indistinct sound that I couldn’t quite identify. And the longer that we drifted, the louder it became.

"Maybe we should try to find the bank," I suggested.

For a moment Eric sat stonily still, his head cocked as he listened to the rhythmic pounding. He shook himself, almost like a dog that had just emerged from a pond, and then looked at me.

"The bank? Yes. Let’s try to get to the bank."

I reached over for the oars, which had been dragging in the water. I sat on the bench, facing the rear and asked, "Which way?"

Eric shrugged and said, "To the right?"

"You mean starboard?"

"Whatever," he said. Even with his claimed Viking heritage and the sailing exploits of his father, he knew very little about the sea. He had been born in the Midwest, about as far from a major body of water as he could get.

I used the oars to turn us and began to pull for the side of the river. Eric moved to the bow and held his hand out into the impenetrable mist, almost like a blind man feeling for obstructions. When he realized that his hand wouldn’t provide much warning, he took one of the axes, holding it out, like some kind of probe.

It wasn’t long before the slapping of the water against stone became louder and I knew that we were approaching the bank, or maybe more accurately, the wall of a cave. I stopped rowing, content to let our forward motion drop off as the current caught us again, dragging us along with it.

A second later, the axe scraped solid stone. Eric pushed against the rock and slowed us so that we kissed the stone wall. It extended upward, into the mist, giving us no clue as to its height.

Eric used the axe to push off, and we continued to drift with the current. Eric had moved so that he was sitting near the center of the boat, in the bow, using the axe to keep us off the rocks. I had pulled in the oars and was happy to sit quietly because it was so hot and humid.

As I stared upward, through the mist, wondering what was hidden behind it, I noticed that the sun was becoming brighter. At first there had been only a dim, glowing ball over us, providing a little light, making the fog seem like a steamed over window seen from two feet away. But now the sun was becoming a glowing orb that hurt my eyes to look at. And I saw that the surface of the water around the boat was clear. I could see down into it, almost to the bottom. The cliffs climbed high to become lost in the mist, but I realized that I could see much farther.

Of course, I hadn’t thought about being able to see the sun while we were inside a cave. The glowing orb had to be the sun, but if we were inside a cave, it couldn’t be. At the time, I just didn’t think about that.

There was a sudden wailing, like a giant beast caught in a trap. A trumpeting that came and fell and then there was silence. I felt cold shivers up and down my back, hoping that the animal was not aquatic. I wasn’t sure how the small boat would stand up to assault from some of the larger animals.

From overhead there was a leather flapping of wings, like some giant bird, or more accurately, a bat. The shadows obscured in the mist were huge but unrecognizable.

"Sounds like it’s above us," said Eric.

I wasn’t sure if that made me feel better or not. Eric was saying that the animal was on the bank above us. I suddenly had the vision of a huge cat waiting in ambush, waiting to pounce on us, but that never happened.

And before I could worry about it, the fog vanished. We had drifted out of it. One second we were in the thick of it and the next we were clear of it. The rock walls seemed to have disappeared with the fog and to the right was a muddy beach. Behind it was a luxurious jungle growth of tall palm, teak and coconut trees. Broadleaf trees with deeply green branches. Below them were huge bushes covered with brightly colored flowers. Reds, yellows, and oranges punctuated the landscape. Farther away, was a meadow, carpeted with grass that didn’t look very tall. A breeze rippled it, making it look like the waves on a pond on a summer afternoon.

Eric moved to the center of the boat and put the oars into the water. He pulled us toward the beach until the bow scrapped on the soft mud.

"We’ve landed," he said.

"Yes," I agreed. I picked up my rifle and climbed from the boat. I dropped to the muddy beach and waited. When nothing happened, when no beast attacked, I took a step forward, toward the plain spread out in front of us.

Eric dragged the boat higher and then tied a rope from the bow to the nearest tree. That finished, he shouldered his pack and picked up his rifle.

"Let’s go," he said.

I turned and looked at him. I could see across the river now. It was wide and slow moving. Opposite us was another jungle, this one coming right down to the water’s edge so that the leaves and some of the trees and bushes dipped into the river. Overhead I could see a couple of birds windmilling on the air currents. Large, dark birds with huge, leathery wings that looked more bat like than bird. They were watching us and the ground under them, looking for easy prey. They were somehow both fascinating and disturbing.

Overhead, the sun had taken on a strange quality. It seemed closer and brighter than it should have been and I wondered if it was because we had traveled so far to the north. And then I realized I was standing in a tropical garden and not the frozen wastes that I expected.

I moved to the boat and pulled my pack from it. I struggled into it, shifting the weight until it sat on my shoulders comfortably. I fastened the straps, bent and picked up my rifle again. I turned, facing Eric and asked, "Now what?"

"We explore, of course."

When he said that, I suddenly realized what he believed. We had found our way into the Inner Earth and any doubts I once had were gone. Slowly, I examined my surroundings, so different than anything I expected and so different from anything that I had ever seen.

"Explore what?" I asked, although I already knew the answer to that.

"Explore the land we came to find. We’re inside the Earth’s crust now."

He didn’t say, "And to find my father." I wouldn’t learn about that until later.

Land to the North - Chapter Six

(Blogger's Note: Earlier chapters follow this.)

Early the next morning we rowed across the Union Strait. There were small islands around it, some of them barren wastes and others covered with brush, bushes and trees. We landed on some, walking inland a few hundred yards before returning to the boat. None of them showed any sign of having a warm, concealed entrance to the Inner Earth. Each was just a frozen land with windswept plateaus waiting silently for the first warming rays of the late spring. We saw only a few animals, mainly in the distance, and the tracks of fewer large predators.

The whole day was spent slowly working our way across the Union Strait, spotting islands and checking them out. We ate a quick, cold lunch on one of the small islands, not taking time to start a fire but instead, sitting among the branches of a toppled tree for shelter. When we finished, we climbed back into our boat and continued rowing to the north.

By nightfall we hadn’t made much progress. The constant starting and stopping, not to mention the brisk winds, slowed us considerably. We finally landed on a large island with a single small hill in the center that seemed to dominate the island. There were a few short, scraggily trees and the occasional bush. We found enough wood for a fire for warmth and ate another meal prepared from our jerky.

It had been a long, hard, cold day, even though it was late spring. There had been little reward for all our work. We both were tired and we fell asleep early. As the sun climbed higher in the sky the next morning, we were both ready to go again.

By noon we had made our way across the strait and were close to the land of Victoria Island. Eric and I argued briefly over the next move. I suggested that we put into shore and make our way across the island on foot. Eric wanted to use the boat to scout the shoreline, working our way to the north. If we saw anything of interest, we could always land to chase it down.

As I studied the map, I could see the wisdom of Eric’s plan. We could carry much more in the boat rather than in our backpacks so we could continue farther to the north.

The currents suggested that the tree that Ramsey reported could have come from the northen edge of Victoria Island, or maybe even farther north. Since it was a warm weather tree and was found in an icy sea, it was probable that it had been growing on the edge of an island that had a warmer climate than anything we were finding here. We shouldn’t miss anything by using the boat. Travel would be simpler and maybe even faster that way.

"Yes," I conceded. "We should use the boat as long as we can."

So, we turned toward the west and continued the journey. Each of the days took on the sameness as the last. Rocking in the boat during the day and then putting into shore at night where I lay on the hard ground, the sensation of the wave motion still with me, trying to keep warm.

We rounded the Wollaston Peninsula and explored Prince Albert Sound. We crossed the Amundsen Gulf and surveyed the Minto Inlet. Finally we found ourselves in the Prince of Wales Strait, Victoria Island on the east and Banks Island on the west. With Banks Island so close, we alternated between it and Victoria Island, exploring each for a couple of hundred yards behind the beach and searching the open ground with binoculars.

And each day we saw fewer signs of life. We would see a bird overhead, or a fish in the water. The snow revealed the footprints of animals, but we rarely saw the animal. Of course there were no signs of human habitation anywhere close now. We were too far to the north and too far from anything that could support a family or a village.

And each day we were farther north. We broke out into the Viscount Melville Sound. We beached out boat on Russell Point late in the afternoon several days later. The sun was toppling toward the horizon and I was cold. Cold from the water sloshing in the bottom of the boat and cold from the wind that roared at us unabated. I was cold from sleeping on the ground and cold from eating cold food.

Annoyed with the lack of progress, I carefully unfolded the map, holding it low so that the wind wouldn’t rip it from my hand and said, "You realize we’re miles north of the farthest reach of any of Ramsey’s maps or photographs. We’ve really ignored what he photographed for us."

"I know," confessed Eric, "but I don’t think he was able to get far enough north. He needed fuel and a base. He could range much farther in a day than we can, but I believe he only eliminated the mainland of Canada. We have to push on."

"Melville Island is almost seventy-five miles across open water," I said. "We’ll never be able to navigate that distance in our boat."

I pulled my compass out of my pocket and opened it. Given where we were standing, with open water in front of us, and land behind us, I knew where north was supposed to be, but the compass pointed to the northeast. We were close to the magnetic north pole and that was going to make navigation across open water tricky at best.

"So, what do you suggest? asked Eric. "That we give up?"

"No," I said. "I think that we should explore Victoria Island more fully before we try anything else. I mean, it’s right here, in front of us."

Eric shook his head sadly and asked, "You really think we’re going to find our entrance on Victoria Island? If it was there, someone would surely have stumbled across it before now and we’d know exactly where it was."

"But there are stories of entrances in California," I countered. "No one has stumbled onto them and let the world know."

"David," he said, "this isn’t going to be easy. I never said it was, but if we’re going to find anything, then we’ve got to continue to the north, to Melville Island. Once we’re there, it’ll be simple to hop from island to island, but we have got to cross the Parry Channel."

I sat down then, on the cold, frozen sand, the wind tearing at my clothes and studied the map. I could see that Eric had a point. To continue around Victoria Island would only take us farther from the islands to the north. If we were careful, we could make it and although we didn’t have sufficient water for a long crossing, there was enough ice floating around us that water wouldn’t be a problem for us.

"Tomorrow then," I said.

Eric stood with his back to me, his eyes on the open water to the north where Melville Island would be if we could have seen it. "Tomorrow," he said. The word was torn from his lips by the cruel biting wind.

"Tomorrow," he repeated.

The next morning was a warmer, clearer day. We set out, taking turns rowing. By late in the morning, we were out of sight of land and I found that unnerving. The compass pointed to the east now and that made my head spin. I knew which way north was, but the compass didn’t care about what I thought I knew. It continued to point in the wrong direction.

We didn’t talk much, having long ago exhausted most of the topics. I wished that we had gotten a better boat with a motor on it, but then I hadn’t expected to spend so much time on the water. I finally said as much to Eric.

"I know," he said. "I didn’t have any idea that these islands were separated by such great distances. At least that was the impression I got from my father. I should have studied the map more closely."

It was at that point I realized just how amateurishly we had put this expedition together. We should have been studying the maps of the area we planned to explore. I hadn’t though much about it because I believed that we would be on the mainland of Canada, far beyond the arctic circle but still on the main land of the continent. Now we were hopping from island to island, driven on by the knowledge of how far we had come already. It would take weeks to get back to civilization and all the time we’d put in already would be wasted.

When night fell, we continued to row, and while Eric slept in the bottom of the boat, I was trying to stay warm and dry by rowing. As Eric dozed, I watched the luminous dial of the compass sitting close at hand. The stars blazed overhead. The air was crisp and cold, but the effort of rowing kept me warm.

I watched shooting stars flare into brightness and die quickly, more in one hour than I had seen in my whole life. Brilliant streaks of light in a rich variety of color.

There was almost no sound around me. Just the gentle slap of the water against the bow of the boat and the quiet, rhythmic breathing of Eric as he slept on.

A quiet, dark world that held no dangers except for the cold winds that blew constantly and tried to rob the body of its warmth, and an ocean that could swallow us completely. I felt myself grow drowsy and felt my eyelids shut. I would jerk awake as I relaxed and began to fall over. For minutes, my heart would pound and I would think that it would be hours before I would fall asleep again.

And then, suddenly, Eric was shaking my shoulder, shouting at me. I opened my eyes and found myself surrounded with a gray mist that obscured the bow of the boat only a few feet from me. Eric, although only inches from my face, was a shadowy shape.

"David," he asked when he saw my eyes fluttering open, "are you all right?"

I sat up and said, "I’m fine. I just fell asleep. That’s all."

"For how long?" he asked.

I reached up and rubbed my eyes. My hand brushed across the stubble on my face. More than could have grown in a few hours overnight. It felt like several days growth.

"I don’t know," I said.

Eric helped to a sitting position. My bones ached and I rubbed a sore spot on my shoulder.

"You notice anything?" he asked.

"You mean other than this thick fog?"

"Yes," he said. "Other than the thick fog."

"I’m hungry," I said. I felt my stomach rumbling as if I hadn’t eaten for a couple of days. "I’m thirsty too."

He waved an arm and said, "It’s warm. Much too warm."

Land to the North -- Chapter Five

We left by eight o’clock the next morning, driving north on paved roads. For a while we followed the Missouri River but it broke away to the west and we continued north. We crossed the border into Iowa, ate lunch and continued on. By late afternoon we were at the Minnesota border. As the sun disappeared, the sky clearing and a sheet of late arctic air settling on us, we found rooms in a hotel only a few miles north of the border. It hadn’t been a bad day’s travel, though it had been tiring.

When I said my good nights to Eric and turned on the electric light in my room, I couldn’t help smiling. Here I was, starting on a great adventure that would rival that I had in France during the Great War. I was traveling into uncharted territory, into lands that no one suspected existed, and yet, on my first night of the journey, I was resting in a warm hotel room with electric lights, the latest newspaper on the desk and a hot shower down the hall.

The only way for it to be better was if I could write to Sara and let her know what I had seen and where I was. I had tried to telephone her the night before and she had seemed, momentarily happy to hear from me. I suspect that she thought I had finally come to my senses and was telephoning her to let her know the expedition was off.

But when I said that we would leave in the morning, her voice turned icy, hard, and without emotion. This was not the news she wanted and she made that clear. I had asked if I should notify her of my return but she was noncommital. I think she wanted to say yes but didn’t want to give me the slightest hint that her position was not as strong as she said it was.

We ended the conversation, if not affectionately, then cordially, much as a divorced couple might say good-by after a meeting with the lawyers.

I was sure that her attitude would change when I returned from a successful expedition. And successful it would be. We had carefully researched the history, we had made a successful reconnaissance by air. All that remained was to follow up on the ground.

The next morning we did the same thing we had the day before. We ate a large breakfast and were on a major highway out of town by eight. It was late afternoon as we approached the Canadian border, which I had thought nothing about. But as we neared it, I realized that we were carrying firearms and ammunition, not mention a large number of crates with food and other supplies. But as we slowed and then stopped, the guard just asked us the nature of our visit to Canada.

Eric smiled at him and said, as calmly as could be, "Fishing. We heard there are some great lakes for fishing in Canada."

"Right you are. The best in the world," said the customs man. He walked to the rear of the truck, peeked in the back and returned to the driver’s side of the cab. "Looks like you boys plan on being here for some time."

"Four or five weeks," said Eric. "We need some permits or anything?"

"Not from me," said the man, "but before you establish your camp, you better check in with the local authorities. Good luck to you."

We continued north then. Each day was a repeat of the last until we were far enough into Canada that the pavement changed to graded roads and finally to tracks across the tundra. The nights were cold enough that the ground remained hard, and the days warm enough to be comfortable.

As we made our way farther north, there were no longer bridges across the rivers. But there were fords and the truck handled them all easily. Finally, we found ourselves almost a far north as we could get without driving into the arctic ocean. The ground was still snow covered, the towns small and far apart, and the nights frigid. Sleeping in the back of the truck and eating cold food from cans made it seem more like a real expedition than it had in the earlier days of hotel rooms and restaurant meals.

The maps and aerial charts and photographs made for us by Randall Ramsey led us to the bare spot that we had seen on them, but it turned out to be nothing of use to us. A bog that generated its own heat because someone had set it on fire and the smoldering peat had melted all the snow around it.

We camped there that night because we didn’t feel like traveling farther. Eric had believed that the slash of brown earth, seen from the airplane, would provide us with our first real clue, but, of course, it didn’t. So we started our own campfire, ate our supper in silence and turned in early. I had known it wasn’t going to be easy.

The following morning, we left the bog, skirted it and headed to the west where Ramsey had claimed to have seen the tree drifting. By noon we had reached the end of the land and parked on a cliff that overlooked an expanse of open ocean.

Eric, standing on the cab of the truck and using his Zeiss binoculars, carefully surveyed our surroundings. Finally, he slipped to the ground, put the binoculars into their case and looked at me. His breath was smoking in the chilly air of the late afternoon.

"Nothing," he said. "Absolutely nothing. White as far as I can see with no break in the snowy surface except for patches of ocean."

We climbed into the truck for the protection it would provide. "Now what?" I asked.

Eric got out a map and studied it for a few moments. "I think," he told me, "that we’ll want to bear to the east from here. Then, if the ice is think enough, we can cross to one of the islands there, probably Victoria Island, and continue on to the north."

I leaned over and examined the map. "Ramsey puts his sighting of the tree farther to the west."

"Yes, but the current could have brought it from Victoria Island or somewhere even farther to the north. My father was well into the arctic circle when he first found his way in."

"I don’t know," I said. "Most of my research seems to indicate that the best entrances are in caves, some of them in California." With the cold beginning to seep into my bones, the promised warmth of California took on an added importance.

"But we’d have to walk a hundred miles inside the caves before we had the chance of finding anything. Those entrances are far from the center of things, and even if we find the right cave, there are so many ways to get lost. No, if we can find our way in up here, we won’t have to walk for hundreds of miles."

"Your father tell you that?" I asked.

"My father told me that," he said.

"Then I suggest we start a fire, cook our dinner and prepare for the morning."

Eric folded the map and jammed it toward the glove box. He glared out the window, at the sun as it slipped toward the horizon that was a long way from us. Reds and oranges blazed across the ice and snow, reflecting to the high cirrus clouds over us. I knew that he was angry about another day wasted, but there was nothing we could do about that. We’d want the whole day to make our way across the ice.

Early the next morning, after a cold breakfast eaten hastily out of cans, we tried to start the truck. I spun the crank, but the weather had been cold and the oil was thick. After nearly twenty minutes, my arms aching with the strain, we realized that we were not going to be able to force it to start.

For an hour, we roamed the plateau, searching for wood. Once we had a huge pile gathered, we build a small fire over several large stones. When the fire was good and hot, we retrieved the stones from the flames and rolled them under the crankcase and oil pan of the truck, being careful to avoid the gas tank because we didn’t want to blow ourselves up.

When those stones cooled, we rolled hotter ones into their place and in only minutes, we were able to start the engine. Eric was so anxious to get going, that he started to drive off and although I was sure the fire would burn itself out, I made him stop long enough for me to extinguish it completely.

Once I climbed back into the cab, we began a bumpy, slow trip across the open prairie or tundra, avoiding the deep ravines and sinkholes and skirting bogs and stands of trees, few through there were. We stayed near the coastline, looking for a way down to the ice choked water.

Victoria Island was off to our left as we drove to the east. Eric stopped periodically and used his binoculars to survey the island, but there was nothing visible to suggest a warm entrance to the Inner Earth.

We eventually found a way to the beach. We drove along the frozen sand but there was no way for us to continue to the island. Eric did find a place where the rocky cliff retreated so that there was an overhang. We decided that it was the perfect place for our base camp. Nothing would be visible except from directly in front. Our truck and other equipment would be protected from the elements while we were off exploring the island.

That night, sitting near the fire which I now thought of as a luxury, Eric, having finished his meal, said, "This is taking longer than I thought it would."

I was a little surprised by his tone. I thought we had been making very good progress. We had already exploded a couple of promising places, and while they didn’t pan out, it just meant we would have to look elsewhere.

"Tomorrow we find a way to get to the island," I said.

"You don’t understand," he snapped.

I didn’t understand his impatience. We hadn’t been traveling that long, we had most of our supplies left, and the map told me there was a small town fifty or a hundred miles to the east where we could resupply if necessary. Our only real problem was the cold. I didn’t like it.

Eric stood up, hands on his hips and looked out, across the open water where Victoria Island stood. "That is the key," he said. "I should have gone... we should have driven directly here."

That confused me. "Why?"

He turned to stare at me and said, "Because that is where my father and sister were last seen."

He didn’t say more, but it now all made some sense to me. It wasn’t a great adventure for him. It wasn’t a lark that we could tell the grand kids about in fifty years. This was a quest for him, and that explained some of his fire, his passion, and his desire to keep moving.

There wasn’t much that I could say to that. I let the conversation die, but I had some questions I would want to ask. There were things that I wanted to know.

The next morning, the truck started easily, but probably because we keep the fire burning throughout the night and kept the oil warm. We spent most of the day driving along the cliffs and on the beaches. We could assemble our boat, a wooden craft that broke down for storage, but by the time we finished, it would be dusk. Another day lost on the preliminaries, which didn’t put Eric into a good mood.

Eric backed the truck into a sheltered area we had found, with me guiding him. When it was parked, he turned off the engine and removed the key. Then, thinking about it, he opened the hood and took the distributor cap, effectively immobilizing the vehicle.

Together, we unloaded the boat and out tools. We dragged the crates to the water’s edge and began the task of assembling the boat. With the cold wind whipping down on us, the job was harder than I would have thought. The thick gloves were clumsy and made the finer details impossible to work. We found that we had to use our exposed hands. That was something we could do for only a few moments at a time before we were forced to don our gloves again to warm our hands.

I stopped long enough to gather drift wood and start a fire close to us. The wind fanned the flames, once I managed to set the wood ablaze, and the fire burned hot. It warmed us quickly, making the job easier.

We finished in the twilight of the day. We left the boat there and walked up the beach to the truck. Eric suggested that we put up our tent and I heartily agreed. That seemed to be the last luxury we would enjoy for a long while.

After a meal cooked over the fire, we assembled our packs, leaving the canned foods and heavier items in the truck and opting for the jerky and dried foods. Eric found a space in his pack for a copy of the book about his father. We made sure that we had plenty of ammunition for our weapons and I realized that if we had been thinking, we would have purchased the same kind of weapons for each of us so that we could have shared the ammo. The 9 mm Mauser would not take the .45 caliber ammo I needed for my Colt automatic.

We both packed the handheld lamps and a supply of the batteries for them. We feared that we didn’t have enough. We had no idea how long our artificial lights would last, once we discovered the cave and began our descent.

With everything ready, we adjourned to the tent and wrapped ourselves into our sleeping bags. Even the building excitement bubbling in me didn’t prevent me from falling asleep quickly. I had just realized that we were finally on the expedition, as I imagined it would be, when I fell asleep.

Land to the North -- Chapter Four

(Blogger’s Note: This whole book is being uploaded one chapter at a time and will therefore be in reverse order when completed. For those who have not yet read it, the earlier chapters and the Prologue follows this. I leave it that way so that those loyal readers who have been following the story won’t have to scroll down to find the newest chapter... Yes, it might be a pain, but that’s just the way it is.)　

　

Ramsey returned two weeks later. He called one morning, claimed that he had want we wanted and set up a meeting for that afternoon. Eric and I drove to the airfield, a tiny dirt strip outside of Kansas City. There was a large building, the hangar, a corrugated tin structure with a dirt floor and a windsock on the roof. To one side of it was a small, wooden building with a rusting pickup truck parked nearby. We walked across the patchy grass, scraped our feet on the cement step, and entered.

Inside there was a large table in the center of the room. Maps of Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa dominated one wall. A counter, slanted, ran along one wall and was littered with flight planning aids including maps, charts, rulers, plotters and NOTAMS. A tiny office with large glass windows was stuck in one corner. A bright light burned inside and I could see Ramsey sitting at his desk in there.

Apparently Ramsey heard us and came out to greet us. He was a short, stocky man with black hair and bushy eyebrows. There was stubble on his chin and an unlighted cigar in his mouth, using it as a prop to prove how tough he was. He wore a leather jacket that creaked when he moved. He held out a beefy hand and said, "Welcome, gentlemen. Welcome."

As Eric shook his hand, he asked, "Have you had time to develop the film?"

"Don’t waste time, do you? said Ramsey. "Yes, I’ve developed the film and had blow ups made. According to my calculations, you fellows owe me an additional three hundred, eight dollars and ninety-two cents."

"Show me what you’ve got," said Eric, "and then we’ll talk about money."

Ramsey took his cigar out of his mouth, looked at the end of it as if inspecting its ash, though it was unlit. He leaned on the table, grabbed a packet and dragged it closer. "These are the photographs I made. All were taken from three thousand feet. I’ve only had the ones that show some landmarks blown up."

He smiled and shook his head. "Most of it was just miles and miles of white with nothing there to use to navigate."

As Eric and I examined the aerial photos, Ramsey pulled out a chart and laid it out. "Now, what I’ve done is this. I’ve marked each of your aerial maps with a number and then drawn a square on this map that shows where the photo was taken. Naturally there are some gaps, but it gives you a good idea of how to get from one square to the next."

Eric produced a magnifying glass. He thumbed through the photos quickly, separating them into two piles. When he was finished, he used the magnifying glass to examine each of the charts in the smaller pile. Once he called my attention to the corner of a photo and asked, "What do you make of that?"

I took the glass and leaned closer. There was a dark smudge that might have been an island in the sea, or bare ground in the middle of a snow field. Try as I might, I couldn’t see any detail in it.

While I looked it over, Eric questioned Ramsey. He asked him if he had seen anything strange on any of his flights.

Ramsey rubbed his chin and stared at the ceiling, as if there was the answer written up there. "What’d you mean?" he finally asked.

"Anything that didn’t seem to belong. Something out of the ordinary."

"No, I didn’t," said Ramsey. "Did notice a tree floating in the ocean. That was a little strange because it had leaves on it. This time of year and that far north, I’d have expected it to be bare."

"Where was that?" asked Eric. He pulled the map close and said, "Point it out to me."

Ramsey touched the map and said, "It was somewhere around in here."

Eric looked at the number in the square and lined it up with the photograph of the area. He set it next to the one where we had spotted the brown smudge. The two went together to form a single large chart.

I could see that Eric was excited. It was the first tangible evidence we had found that wasn’t from old texts and second-hand accounts. Granted, it wasn’t much, but then it was more than either of us had expected. A slash of bare ground and the trunk of a fully foliaged tree. Either could be explained by natural occurrences and Occam’s Razor demanded that the simplest explanation that accounted for all the facts was the best. That ruled out the Inner Earth, but Occam’s Razor was a logical argument and logic sometimes flew in the face of reality.

Eric questioned Ramsey further, asking him if he saw anything else that he found strange. When Ramsey came up came up with nothing, Eric to his credit, asked, "Where did you land your airplane?"

Again Ramsey referred to a map. "There’s a small town here, about a hundred miles from the major search area. I could refuel there and buy supplies. It was inconvenient and reduced the amount of search time, but it was the only town anywhere close where I could find the supplies I needed."

"Yes," said Eric. "You talk to the locals?"

Now Ramsey grinned, looking almost sheepish. "Found a small pub and did some time in it."

"Good. Good. Now in your conversations with the locals, did they mention anything to you that you found odd? Maybe talk about a valley nearby that is uncommonly warm? Or maybe people and animals disappearing? Or maybe strange looking and sounding people around?"

Ramsey took a new cigar from the pocket of his leather jacket, bit the end off it and spit that to the floor. He dug in his pocket for a match, didn’t find one and didn’t light the cigar. Instead he propped a foot up on the edge of a wastebasket, leaned an elbow on his knee and thought. After a few moments, he said, "Now, you have to understand that you didn’t ask me to look around on the ground or to talk to the locals. You didn’t say anything about any of that."

"Yes," said Eric agreeing, "I didn’t want to color your thinking and I didn’t want to divert you from your main mission which was the photography. Now, think back. Did anyone say anything that you thought strange?"

"I’m afraid not," said Ramsey shaking his head. "Our talk didn’t get around to that. Mostly, I told them about flying airplanes and about the Great War." He chuckled and said, "Didn’t have to buy too many drinks either. They kept them flowing as their reward to a war veteran."

"Well," I said, gathering the aerial photographs, maps and other charts into a single, large pile. "I think we have about everything we need."

Eric pulled his wallet from the inside pocket of his jacket. He opened it and counted out the additional fee. He handed the money over and said, "I’ll need a receipt, of course."

"Of course," agreed Ramsey, chomping on the unlighted cigar. He pulled a sheet of paper toward him and scribbled, "Received $308.92, payment in full for services rendered. He handed over the paper took eight cents from his pocket, grinning.

We thanked him and he told us to come back anytime. He’d be right there and he’d love to work for us again.

Outside the door, almost before he had closed it completely, Eric spun on me and nearly yelled, "What do you think about that? We have something?"

His excitement was contagious. I stopped walking and said, "I think we have something. What do we do first?"

Eric hurried toward our truck and opened the driver’s side. He said, "We get back to town, pack our clothes and throw them into the truck. We then head north."

I looked at my watch. "First thing in the morning would be better. A good night’s sleep, a big breakfast and we’ll be on our way. It’s too late today to make much of a dent in the trip."

I didn’t say that I wanted to talk to Sara one last time. I just couldn’t leave it the way it was now. I hadn’t talked to her since she had walked out of the restaurant several days earlier.

Eric looked as if he was going to protest the delay and then nodded. "You’re right. I’ve waited this long, spent years dreaming of this moment and I suppose one night, either way, won’t matter all that much."

We climbed into the cab of the truck and Eric started it. He slammed it into gear and backed up. He turned onto the muddy road and we rattled our way back toward Kansas City.

"Damn!" he said. "I know we’ve got something now." He glanced at me and added, "It’s the tree you know. Currents are flowing in the opposite direction. There is no way for a tree with leaves to get into the arctic ocean unless it originated farther to the north. Not to the south."

I didn’t say anything to him, but I knew he was right. I could feel something and knew that we were about to embark on a great adventure.

Land to the North - Chapter Three

(Blogger’s Note: This whole book is being uploaded one chapter at a time and will therefore be in reverse order when completed. For those who have not yet read it, the earlier chapters and the Prologue follows this. I leave it that way so that those loyal readers who have been following the story won’t have to scroll down to find the newest chapter... Yes, it might be a pain, but that’s just the way it is.)

Finding a pilot and a plane to rent turned out to be an easy task. After the war ended there were many men who still desired to fly and who had bought surplus aircraft from the American government. Any excuse to get into the sky for hire was good enough for them.

It was a little more difficult to find one who would fly toward the north pole. Aerodromes were few in the northern reaches of Canada and Alaska, but there were some. Our pilot, Randall J. Ramsey, who had shot down German airplanes and strafed German lines for the British was more than happy to take our five hundred dollar fee, plus expenses, our maps and camera, and fly over the frozen wastes and icy seas looking for the island that I sometimes thought of as mythical.

While Ramsey was in the north, having flown out a couple of days after we made our requests, Eric and I roamed downtown Kansas City searching for the equipment we would need for the expedition. Eric had arrived with a list of what he thought we would need and we spent a day in the library reading about the expeditions outfitted during the exploration of Africa. It gave us plenty of ideas.

Once that list was completed, we inventoried everything that Eric had brought. He had thought of rope, great coils of it, backpacks, knives and machetes, a high powered hunting rifle with plenty of ammunition, a Mauser broom handle pistol taken off a dead German officer, cartons of canned food, hand-held electric torches, shovels and axes. He was a little light on medical supplies but we remedied that easily. There was so much that forty men couldn’t have carried it all.

"Doesn’t matter," said Eric, crouching in the rear of the truck. "That’s what this vehicle is for. We drive as far as we can and then establish a base camp. We range out from there."

"Sounds good," I said. "We should add to the food supplies, we’ll need canteens and another weapon or two and ammo for me. Oh, and how about a short wave radio?"

"How would we power it?" asked Eric.

"Batteries. We wouldn’t have to us it all that much. Just in an emergency."　

"Yes," said Eric. "That’s something we should have."

He dropped from the rear of the truck and secured the flap. We hurried into the foyer of the nearest building, listening to the wind howl.

"I think we should delay our departure by two or three weeks," he said. "Let the weather have it’s last good blow."

I thought about that and nodded my agreement. I didn’t tell him that the more I thought about it, the less I liked it. We were heading into practically virgin territory. The map that Eric had given the pilot was marked with large white squares that warned "Topographical data incomplete or unavailable."

That was something that I just didn’t like and I imagined Ramsey liked it even less. When we went in, we’d have a better idea of what was there than Ramsey did, but then he was flying over it and could get out quickly if he had to. It made me think of the great expeditions to the Himalaya Mountains and the guides who led the parties up the slopes of the mountains. It seemed that someone always preceded the explorers.

Sara didn’t take the news with a great deal of aplomb. At first, she sat across from me, in one of the finest restaurants in Kansas City while a small band played quietly in the background. There was the clink of knives and forks against the fine china and muted conversation. There were white cloths on the table, a cut glass vase with a greenhouse flower as the center piece.

After we ordered, Sara waited, a half smile on her face. I knew that she was anticipating something and it wasn’t until later that I realized what it was. She thought I was going to ask her to marry me and I had been so caught up in planning the expedition that I hadn’t even thought about that.

When the wine came and the waiter left, having gone through the ritual of opening the bottle, allowing me to taste and accept the wine and then filling our glasses, I said, "I would like to propose a toast." I lifted my glass and said, with great enthusiasm, "To the North Pole!"

The fire went out of her eyes and her face paled. She set her glass on the table without drinking from it. She looked directly at me and asked, "What are you talking about?"

I felt a sudden panic. I thought that Sara would be supportive of the expedition, though sitting there I began to wonder why I thought that. Maybe I had believed that she would see the scientific contribution we would make. Maybe she would understand that this was something that would transcend our time and put me up there with Magellan and Columbus.

And suddenly I know that she wasn’t thinking in terms of scientific contributions. She was seeing her life collapse around her and she didn’t like it. The little things that she had ignored as I tried to talk to her about them were suddenly more important than she had thought.

Quietly, her voice icy and her words quite sharp and distinct, she said, "The North Pole." It was almost as if she had never heard the words before and that I had spoken a foreign language.

Feebly, I said, "Eric Jansen arrived here a few days ago. I introduced him to you, remember. We’ve been working up a plan to find the entrance to the Inner Earth. An entrance his father had seen."

"To the Inner Earth? The Inner Earth?" she said. "I told you that’s a myth and I thought we had finished with that nonsense weeks ago."

"Jansen has maps and descriptions from his father and grandfather. They’ve both seen it," I said, realizing that I didn’t sound convincing even to me.

"How much money is this going to cost you?" she asked, her voice still low but now dripping with sarcasm.

"Very little..."

"So an old Army buddy shows up and asks for money and you feel obligated to give it to him."

I was now on the defensive and unsure of how I’d gotten there. I didn’t like the feeling but said, "It’s not like that at all. I didn’t give him money and he didn’t ask. I contributed to the expedition. Money to hire a pilot and some for the supplies I’ll need when we push north, but I’ve given no money to Eric."

"Well, that makes it better. The mark doesn’t understand how the con works, but can tell me he’s given away no money."

I was surprised by her suggestion of a con. But I also knew that money wasn’t really the issue here.

She looked down at the table and fingered the silverware next to her plate. "So. When are you leaving and how long will you be gone?"

"Not long at all. A couple of weeks. We’re going to wait for the weather to warm up some more and I’ll be back by fall."

"A couple of weeks. Fall isn’t for months."

"I’ll be here until we leave. It’s not like I’m going off tomorrow."

"And what am I supposed to do all this time?"

"It’s really only a few weeks," I said. "It’s not as if we had anything planned."

"You’ve made that abundantly clear."

I realized what I had said and tried to recover. "I mean we haven’t planned..." But that wasn’t any better.

She stood up suddenly, tossed her napkin onto the center plate. She looked as if she was going to say something to me, but then just turned and fled.

I caught her at the front door where she was demanding a taxi. I touched her shoulder but she jerked away from me, refusing to turn around. The maitre ‘d was behind me, mumbling into a telephone while Sara stood facing the frosted windows, staring at the darkening street.

The one time I hoped the taxi would be slow was the one time that the driver broke the current land speed record. The maitre ‘d approached, glanced at me and said, "You cab is here, madam."

Without looking at me, she said, "Thank you." she slipped along the wall, keeping her back to me until she reached the door. With one hand on the knob, she hesitated. Without looking back, she said, "If you ever get over these childish adventures, you let me know. Until then, I don’t want to see you again."

She opened the door, letting in an icy blast of late winter air. She ran to the cab, climbed in and I saw her face at the rear window momentarily and then she was gone.

I went back into the main room, waved off the waiter and slowly drank what was left of the wine. When I finished the bottle, I staggered to the door and asked that someone find me a cab. Naturally, I had to wait thirty minutes.

Land to the North -- Chapter Two

(Blogger’s Note: This whole book is being uploaded one chapter at a time and will therefore be in reverse order when completed. For those who have not yet read it, the earlier chapters and the Prologue follows this. I leave it that way so that those loyal readers who have been following the story won’t have to scroll down to find the newest chapter... Yes, it might be a pain, but that’s just the way it is.)
　
　
　
I spent weeks trying to find Eric Jansen. I wrote letters to the War Department but they were buried under requests from families of men lost during the Great War. I wrote letters to the newspapers in all the major cities from the east coast to the west. I tried to find Emerson, the man who wrote about Olaf Jansen and then I tried to locate Olaf. It seemed that Eric, along with everyone who knew anything about Olaf and his Smokey God had dropped from the face of the Earth.

Sara was beside herself. She tried to interest me in the theatre or vaudeville and even suggested that we spend some time watching the movies in the local movie house. They were interesting diversions, but couldn’t take my mind off the haunting stories told by Eric.

Then, out of the blue, the situation changed. There was a knock at my door one night and when I opened it, there stood Eric Jansen. He looked tired, pale, haggard. His blond hair was now quite long and he had grown a beard. His blue eyes had taken on a wild look. He had always been a tall man, but now he was thin as well. He didn’t look well, almost insane with the intensity of the fires that burned within him.

For a moment I stood there gaping at him, sure that he was an apparition conjured by my desire to find him.

"May I enter?" he asked, his voice low, quiet and a little raspy.

"Of course," I sputtered, stepping back and gesturing at the interior.

Jansen crossed the threshold, glancing around, and then fell into the only chair in my room. A thread bare, overstuffed chair next to a small table that held an electric lamp and one of the volumes I had been reading.

I shut the door and sat on the edge of the bed. I noticed that Eric’s clothes were old, patched and frayed, but they were clean. Although his boots were scuffed, there was no mud or snow on them. He carried an old satchel that he placed carefully at his feet, as if it held a great but fragile treasure.

"Did you mean it? He asked without preamble.

The question seemed to have nothing to do with the current situation, but I knew what he meant. After his stories on the ship and the books, magazines and the articles I had read, I was prepared for the question.

"Yes," I told him. "Yes. I meant it."

"Good!" he said, nodding. He gestured at the satchel and added, "I have had almost no luck. With Admiral Perry’s reports and the races to various poles, the scientific community laughed at my information. They claimed it was the delusions of a rather unstable mind."

I started to speak but he waved me to silence.

"Oh, they all said to come back if I found evidence. If I had real proof, but I knew they were laughing behind my back."

"Then the expedition is off," I guessed.

"No," he said tiredly. He closed his eyes as if resting, as I gathering strength. "No, I’m going north to look for the entrance. I’m going to make them eat those words."

"Then you have financing."

"I have," he told me, "a thousand dollars and no scientific backing. I have a truck, a camera, and a pistol. That is all that I have."

The disappointment I felt was overwhelming. I stood and moved to my window. Outside, on the street below me, I saw a few people. A horse drawn carriage rocked by. I turned and asked, "Then why are you here?"

"We don’t need much to get the expedition going. My thousand and my truck might be enough, but I can’t do it alone. There is too much, and when I succeed, I’m going to be in the same boat I’m in now. No one is going to believe one man."

"Two men might not be believed either."

"You are correct, of course," he said. "But two men, with different backgrounds who have documented their trip with photographs and artifacts, will have a better chance of convincing our learned friends. We’ll be able to gather enough raw data, I think, to convince them to finance a real expedition."

I turned from him and wandered around my room. I touched the low bookcase holding the volumes that I had yet to read. Books on a variety of subjects ranging from astronomy and anthropology to zoology. I had the layman’s interest in all the sciences and followed the latest discoveries. I knew that astronomers were searching for a mysterious ninth planet in our Solar System, that a few scientists were suggesting what was to be had on an atomic level, and that a theory suggesting that life evolved from lower orders into the higher were all the rage. But I wasn’t a scientist. I was a dabbler in science with no formal training. I said as much to Eric.

"Neither am I," he said. "But much of science has been explored by men such as ourselves. Men with vision. Men with a little information, who have the courage to follow their theories. You claimed to be such a man."

His statement was flattering. Me, a man of vision with the courage to follow that vision.

"If we have no backing," I said, "then how do you propose that we proceed?"

He grinned, but didn’t question my use of "we." Instead, he said, "It’s simple enough. I have mapped a route for us. Much of it is easy. We use the truck to drive north, into Canada, winding our way to the upper reaches of the continent. A small boat to take us to the icecap, and then we hike toward the opening that my father saw there."

"Your father said that he sailed into the opening."

"Ah," said Eric smiling, "you have been doing research yourself."

"Some," I said noncommittal.

"No matter," said Eric. "My father maintained there were land entrances as well. Caves that lead down and that one of them is in the arctic."

"It is my understanding," I said, "that the arctic icecap is just that, ice. There is no land under it. That it floats on the ocean."

"A theory," said Eric. "Who’s to say what lies under those tons of ice? I suggest that there is a volcanic island under a portion of the ice. A dead volcano with a shaft that will take us into the land that my father first explored."

That made sense, I had to admit. I nodded then and asked, "Do you have any idea where your island is?"

"A very good idea." He leaned forward, opened his satchel and pulled out a map. He opened it slowly, carefully, as if it was quite brittle, glanced at the table next to him and then stood but walked toward my bed. As he spread the map on the bed, he said, "My father gave me a few clues, and then researching the available literature, I picked up others. I believe that we can reach one of the caves. I have marked the search area on the map."

He had circled an area that was quite large. Parts of Alaska, Canada and the arctic ice cap were within the boundaries. It was literally hundreds of square miles.

"This is the best place," he said. "I think there may be an entrance in the mountains of Peru or Equador, but it would be disguised, hidden in the jungles and guarded by the Indians. If we managed to get close, I think the Indians would attack and prevent us from entering any of the caves."

"Just a very general idea," he responded. "But the jungle and the Indians make it a very undesirable portal."

"I’m not that keen on the arctic one," I said. "Especially in the winter."

"But it’s late February now. By the time we could get the expedition ready and travel north, it would be May. The best time of an arctic expedition to begin. We’ll have the whole summer in front of us."

I had to admit that it seemed that Eric had thought his way through the whole thing. He had arrived with his truck, his map, a little money, and his itinerary. I was reluctant to join him, only because I had become used to the luxuries of Kansas City. I liked the warmth of the steam heat, the convenience of the electricity, and the ease of restaurant meals.

"We’d want to be back by autumn," he said. "If we haven’t found anything by then, the weather would turn against us."

I sat on the edge of the bed and studied the map. As I looked at it, I realized that I had decided to go. I couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment that I had made the decision, but I knew that there was no longer a question about it. I was going to go. I might have decided at the moment I opened the door and saw who it was, or it might have been when he pulled out the map. All I knew now was that I was in. I was going.

"An aerial search would help us eliminate a great deal of barren territory and open ocean."

"I thought of that, but I can’t afford to buy an airplane. Besides, I don’t know how to fly one."

"Neither can I, but I would imagine that we could find someone with both a plane and the experience who would help us with the search."

"We don’t have unlimited funds and there is a great deal of equipment and supplies that we still need."

The potential of the find was so great that a small investment could pay gigantic dividends. If nothing else, the story of the expedition would be worth something. An article, with suitable pictures for a scientific journal, the Saturday Evening Post or National Geographics certainly wasn’t impossible.

Eric looked at me and asked, quietly, "Then you’ll go?"

"Of course," I said. "Was there ever any doubt?"

Land to the North -- Chapter One

(Blogger’s Note: This whole book is being uploaded one chapter at a time and will therefore be in reverse order when completed. For those who have not yet read it, the Prologue follows this. I leave it that way so that those loyal readers who have been following the story won’t have to scroll down to find the newest chapter... Yes, it might be a pain, but that’s just the way it is.)
　
　
My name is David Morgan Stone and until recently, I was an officer in the United States Army Expeditionary Force to France. A German artillery shell, directed at the trenches behind my command post fell short and the shrapnel killed both my aide and my first sergeant. I was wounded and by the time I was healed, the Great War was over and I wasn’t needed in Europe.

On the ship coming home, I met a man named Eric Jansen who claimed that his father had once visited a strange land that no one living on the Earth had ever seen. Now, traveling on a steamship loaded with soldiers returning from war is a fairly boring proposition. The government didn’t waste money on frills and the library of the ship, such as it was, consisted mainly of navigation texts and seafaring stories. In other words, Jansen’s stories were about the only form of entertainment available and he wasn’t shy about spinning these wonderful, if unbelievable tales. I found myself looking forward to our long afternoon chats.

There was a wardroom on the ship, used for the meals for the officers, but normally vacant during the middle of the afternoon. Jansen and I took to meeting there after the noon meal, sipping coffee from heavy mugs provided by the ship’s steward. I found myself drawn into the stories that Jansen claimed were all true.

"After we get home," he told me one day, "I would like to prove to you that my father was right and certainly wasn’t crazy."

I really cared, at that point, but there was, literally, nothing else to do.

"If I can get a university... or anyone else... to finance an expedition, I’m going to look for that underground land."

It was at that moment I realized that Jansen had shared his stories with me because he was looking for someone to go with him. I was the first step of the journey and if I ignored his invitation, then he would probably never have the courage to pursue it. At least that’s what I thought then. I had no way of knowing that his motivation for searching for this unknown land went further than a desire to prove his father right.

But, having spent several months in the trenches on the front lines and then more months in the hospital recovering, I knew how important dreams could become. They were a way of bridging the time between the arrival at the front and the time for going home. It was a way to keep sane in an insane place and a way to stay alive when there were so many ways to get killed. Many of the dreams became obsessions and once the man returned to his real world and normal life, the obsession faded away and was forgotten. Or so I thought.

I smiled and leaned back. I said, "Well, if you get your expedition together, give me a call. I’d like to go along with you."

"You mean that?" asked Jansen, his eyes sparkling.

"Of course," I said, believing it at the moment, but I also thought that once we reached port, he would forget about it and that would be it.

Two days later we left the ship to a cheering crowd on the pier. A band played and flags flapped in the stiff, cold breeze. As I came down the gangplank, I saw Sara standing behind a makeshift barricade, waving a white handkerchief and shouting my name.

As I started toward her, my heart filled with pleasure at seeing her again, I glanced to the rear. Eric Jansen was slipping off the ship, his duffel bag over his shoulder. No one rushed forward to meet him and a second later, Sara had wrapped her arms around me, kissing me with a passion that drove all thoughts of Jansen and his stories from my mind.

We pushed our way through the cheering throng on the dock, the band playing Sousa marches with great enthusiasm and little else and found a taxi. We leaped into the rear and told the driver to take us to the nearest hotel where we spent a week learning about each other all over again.

My mustering out pay that included a couple of bonuses, not to mention some savings, was more than enough to keep me happy for a year or more. Without the pressure of having to find employment immediately, Sara and I took a leisurely trip across the eastern United States. We stopped in Niagra but the falls didn’t inspire us to marry then and there. We planned to wait, and stuck to that plan.

We ended our journey in Kansas City where Sara had a job as a typist. I found a room where I planned to write my memoirs about the war. I had kept a diary but it had vanished in the explosion that had killed my friends and wounded me.

I spent much of my time in the library, reading the newspaper accounts of the war, surprised at how they differed from my memories. Mostly it was a description of the mud and the cold and the wet of the trenches that smelled like freshly dug graves. Water that stood in permanent pools in the bottom, rotting boots off the feet before attacking the flesh. It was a miserable existence that had to be chronicled because the people who sent their boys off to fight should know what it was like. Not a glorious adventure by any means.

During those tours in the library, I came across the story of Marshall Gardner, a fellow Midwesterner who claimed that the Earth was hollow. It was a fascinating account of life in the center of the planet. He talked about openings at the poles that led to a tropical paradise inside the Earth. Admiral Perry had found evidence of this during his attempts to reach the poles but had never tried to explore it.

I found myself swept up in the accounts of the Inner Earth. Garner described the trunks of unknown trees found drifting in the Arctic Oceans. He wrote about the flora and fauna that obviously belonged to a warmer climate, but which had been found in the frozen snows of the arctic tundra. Facts that seemed to contradict each other.

But Garner wasn’t the only man who believed that there was something hidden in the center of the Earth. Jules Verne wrote about an imagined trip through the caves of Iceland that took the explorers deep into the bowels of our planet. I began to suspect that Verne’s story wasn’t the fiction so many believed.

Sara found my intense fascination with the Hollow Earth annoying. She refused to listen to me when I came from the library loaded down with fresh facts. She forbid me to speak about it in her presence, even when she saw I was bursting to tell her of some new discovery.

On a bleak day, the sky a gun metal gray that threatened snow at any moment, I uncovered the account of Captain David Robson who claimed to have found a cloud enshrouded island where there should have been no land. Robson dropped anchor and a landing party rowed to the steaming, shell-studded beach. Fish, some of them still alive, were strewn across the muddy flats. Others, rotting in the steaming heat of the island, were beginning to turn.

Robson’s men worked their way inland, through a misty forest that was dripping salt water and draped with Spanish moss. They found a city of broken buildings, the stone walls slimed with moss. Scattered around them were the artifacts of a lost civilization. Bronze swords, iron-tipped arrows, metal pots, jeweled goblets and dozens of things that the sailors didn’t recognize.

They spent the morning exploring the island. They found no animals, other than the fish, living on it. There were no bones of the people who had built the city. No evidence that anyone still lived there until they discovered a large stone box. Several of them dragged it to the beach and wrestled it into a long boat to be taken to their ship.

On the deck of the HMS Jesmond, they opened it expecting treasure but found, instead, the mummified body of a large man. Captain Robson suggested that the man might have been an Egyptian. Others thought he might have once been a resident of Atlantis.

All this interested me greatly. Each article or book I found made me search harder for more information. I was rewarded daily. And then I came across the story of the Smokey God and I felt my stomach turn over and the blood drain from my face.

An old Norwegian, Olaf Jansen, told of sailing north until he came to a warm land of tropical plants, sandy beaches kissed by the sun, and plentiful fruits. He was captured by the kindly men who lived there and was taken to their city. The tall, statuesque people showed him their country, their cities and their farms. He toured their powerplants and schools. After several months in the Inner Earth, Olaf Jansen was allowed to board his ship and sail for home.

I sat for a long time, staring at the people hurrying along the sidewalk outside the library. The women held their hats on with their gloved hands as the cold wind whipped at the hems of their skirts. The men, bundled in long coats and bent forward, rushed about their business.

Around me I heard almost nothing. A cough that was quickly stifled. A feminine laugh. A book dropped to the hardwood floor. I ignored it all, glancing occasionally at the story of Olaf Jansen and thought about the stories told to me by Eric Jansen. Maybe Eric did have something to go on. I wished that I had paid more attention to him, or had written some of it down because I found myself wishing that I could get in touch with him.

Land to the North -- Prologue

(Blogger's note: This is the beginning of a novel. I will post the chapters as I finish them over the next several weeks... This means that the novel will appear on the blog backwards. The earlier chapters coming at the end. To read them in order, you need to begin with the Prologue, and then the chapters in order. You'll have to scroll down to find the earlier chapters.)

The old steamer trunk, a flat black, dented thing covered with stickers from some of the most exotic ports of call in the known world, stood at the far end of the attic, centered under the arch of the wooden beams. The path to it was partially blocked by a collection of fallout from the day to day task of living. There were broken lamps and scarred tables, ripped chairs and clothes that were so hopelessly out of date that they would never be back in style.

He found a variety of broken, old toys that predated the electronic fads of the late twentieth century that included a basketball backboard, a wooden box holding a Lionel train and a cardboard box containing nearly a thousand toy soldiers who had seen action in the Civil War, World War II, Vietnam and Iraq.

But Steven Morgan wasn’t interested in the debris of generations. His goal was the trunk that had disappeared when his mother had caught him studying the decals of far away destinations that his mother refused to talk about and that his father said had been in the family for more than a hundred years. When he was ten he tried to open it and when his father caught him, he had been sent to his room. The trunk had disappeared then, and the door to the attic acquired a new padlock with keys that were hidden.

Morgan found the keys by accident when he was twelve and he opened the long sealed door. Upstairs, hidden at the far end of the attic, under a bit of canvas that looked so out of place that it signaled the presence of some secret treasure, he found the trunk again. He ran his hands over the rough, pocked marked surface and studied the fading stickers in the afternoon heat.

Rather than escaping to the air conditioning of his bedroom or the family room or the computer room, he stood there, his T-shirt soaked and tried to imagine what would be hidden inside.

Finally, he went into the garage, found some tools, and returned to the attic. For a moment he stopped at the door. Both parents were gone for the day. His sister, an obnoxious youngster named Gracie who desired nothing more than to make life miserable for the majority of the human race, was visiting her latest boyfriend. The house was empty, the family gone for hours yet, and his curiosity overwhelmed him.

He closed the door, climbed the short flight of stairs and stood looking at the trunk as if it was some sort of idol in an ancient, ruined temple. The naked light bulb burned above it and sunlight streamed through the louvered vent near it.

With the odor of dust hot in his nostrils, he crossed the floor. He stood over the hasp on the truck, levered the screwdriver between the metal parts of the lock and pulled once, sharply. He was astonished at the ease with which the lock broke.

Morgan set the screwdriver on the floor and then hesitated. He wiped his face on the tail of his T-shirt, leaving a ragged, dirty smear. He grabbed the top of the trunk then, and pried it open. The disappointment struck his with an almost physical force. On one side were old clothes hanging from a short metal bar. Under then were shoes and boots. On the other side was a series of drawers. Morgan wasn’t sure what he expected but dirty clothes and ratty shoes was not at the top of the list.

Morgan fell back, into one of the old chairs creating a cloud of dust that swirled around his head. He coughed once or twice and closed his eyes as he breathed in the dust.

Feeling that a lifetime of dreams was slipping away, he reached out and opened the top drawer. It was empty. As was the second. The treasure was in the third.

Morgan reached in and felt the handle of the Mauser pistol with a broomstick grip. The magazine lay next to it, along with several loose bullets. This was the reason the trunk was locked and hidden.

The final drawer, at the bottom, yielded a leather bound book with a rotting ribbon around it. He picked it up carefully, afraid that it would fall apart in his hands. He opened it and looked at the first page.

The ink, that once might have been blue was now faded and brown. From the few notes on that page, it was clear that he had found a diary of an uncle he didn’t even know existed. An uncle who had vanished a long time ago, but had left a written record of his travels. Morgan pulled his chair around so that he could seen the diary better, and began to read.

Liar, Liar

David Kelly had never told a lie in his life... until he was nine years old. After that, he rarely told the truth.

He discovered that nearly everyone would believe his lies because they were so much more interesting than the truth. So, his father became an FBI agent, an airline pilot, a selectee for the space program who had to drop out because the President had asked.

He had been awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroism in Vietnam... the Gulf War or Afghanistan. His father had been a hero in World War II, flying with Pappy Boyington, though his father hadn’t been born until after that war had ended.

In high school, the family moved, so Kelly thought up a whole new set of lies. In his old school he had been a star on the football team until he blew out his knee winning the state championship. He had been the editor of the school newspaper whose investigative journalism had gotten the principal fired for a fling with a well-endowed junior who had the IQ of a door knob.

He kept it up until his classmates realized that he would have had no time for studies unless there were thirty hours in a day and eight days a week. He couldn’t have done everything he claimed unless he was fifty years old and started when he was five. They realized that he was making it all up.

Not that it mattered to anyone. The stories were all told with a flair that suggested that Kelly believed them too and thought that everyone else should as well. They listened and smiled but didn’t believe a word he said. They did, however, vote him the most likely to succeed because they had watched the political commercials, watched as corporations ripped off everyone they could, and saw their heros peddling everything with all sorts of outrageous claims. Most thought Kelly would become a writer because he was very good at telling his stories.

None of that bothered Kelly. He dated frequently and told the girls the same stories he told everyone else. Some of them believed him, not because they were dumb but because they liked him. They wanted to believe a little of what he said. And he did have a scar on his knee that could have been from an operation after his winning touchdown... but it was really from a burn, self-inflicted, when he knelt too close to the hot exhaust of his brother’s mini-bike.

In college, then in the Army, and finally as he entered the world of business, he kept up his string of lies. As he moved into each new realm he learned that if he tempered his lies with a little restraint, he could convince some people that he was telling the truth. The trick was to make sure he did not tell one person two versions of the same story... not that it mattered.

Lying was his avocation and it was harmless. He didn’t do it to get ahead. He didn’t do it to make a fool out of anyone. He just did it for the entertainment value. He was happy and he kept his fellows happy.

And then he reached his thirty-fifth birthday. His business career, like his military career and his college career, was mediocre. Nothing spectacular until he had an experience that would put his lies to shame. It was so unbelievable that no one would, well, believe it.

It changed Kelly. For days he walked around the office, quiet, without a tall tale to be told. They thought he might have a touch of the flu... or that something tragic had happened. They tried to prompt him with questions about some of his adventures, but he wouldn’t take the bait.

Six days after the transformation, Kelly attended his regular Onota Meeting, an informal group who met for a cheap lunch, some cheap drinks and some tall stories. It might be said that this was like the "Liar’s Clubs" of the nineteenth century, although none of the members would have ever described it that way. It was really just an excuse to have a long lunch in the middle of the week. Like so many of his other activities, it could be described as harmless.

Kelly was late for the meeting and when he walked in, the chairman, Ruth Greenberg, was asking if anyone knew where Kelly might be. He strode to the front of the room, holding the latest edition of the newspaper high over his head and proclaimed, "I know that no one will ever believe this, especially after all the things I have said for all these years, but this is all true."

The chairman glanced around nervously because the program had already been set, or as set as it ever was. The featured speaker, a young woman who was going to talk of her days living aboard the space station nodded slightly and the chairman relaxed. There would be no confrontation as if there ever was, but she liked to worry about such things because it made her feel like a real chairman.

Kelly was waved over to the rostrum by the enthusiastic crowd. They knew that if he was going to speak, they would be treated to an entertaining program. Kelly, on the other hand was nervous for the first time in his life. Sweat blossomed on his forehead and he felt it drip down his back and sides. He knew that he was not dressed for the meeting, wearing rumpled clothes, but it wasn’t until the last minute that he had decided to attend. He hadn’t taken time to change.

As he poured himself a glass of water, more to give his hands something to do for a moment than because he needed a drink, he said, "I’m sorry to burst in here like this, but what I have to say is important. I know that you’ll find this story hard to believe, because I’m telling it, but I assure you that it’s true.

There was a murmur through the crowd because the one thing that Kelly had never done was assure them that a story was true. He just let think what they wanted to think about it.

Kelly took a sip of his water, started to set the glass down and then raised it again so that he could drain it. Then he leaned to the chairman and asked that someone get him a Vodka Collins and to keep them coming because he wanted to get drunk in the very near future.

Finally he began. "I didn’t recognize them at first. No one would have because they looked just like us. Oh, they talked a little strange, and they walked a little strange but when I was overseas in the Army, in Greece and not Vietnam like I told everyone, I had seen some strange customs.

"No matter. I answered their questions, and was mildly surprised that they knew my name. Just mildly surprised, mind you. Not that I thought I’m famous anywhere. I just figured that someone else in town might have mentioned me to them. It wouldn’t be that unheard of."

Kelly stopped talking long enough to take a drink from the Vodka Collins just handed to him. He noticed that the crowd, though still quiet was getting restless, and if he wanted to hold them, he had to get to the point.

"They thanked me for my help and left, saying that they hoped that they would meet me again sometime. I mumbled much the same thing and immediately forgot about it. That was something I shouldn’t have done.

"On my way home that night, as I passed that huge empty field on the edge of town, the one that used to be the National Guard armory, the car engine died. There were no other cars around so I grabbed my cell phone, but I couldn’t get a signal."

He held up a hand and said, "I know, we have complete coverage, but I just couldn’t get a signal. And with no help available, I got out to look under the hood. I knew there was nothing I could do but stare at the engine. I know I’ve said that there wasn’t a mechanical device ever made that I couldn’t fix, but it’s just not true. I had a hell of a time finding the safety latch just so that I could pop the hood. This might have been the first time I ever saw the engine of the car.

"There was nothing obviously wrong. The car just wouldn’t run. I touched a few wires, recognized the air intake, but I didn’t know what to do. Had I really been thinking, I would have realized that the electrical system had been suppressed in some fashion, but I didn’t give it a thought then.

"The sudden voice behind me startled me and I jumped slightly. It said, ‘There’s nothing you can do about it. We stopped your motor.’

"In what might have been my first real burst of insight ever, I said, ‘I know. Your magnetic field also killed the lights, radio and my cell phone."

"The voice said, ‘Very good, except it’s a little more than just a magnetic field.’

"Then I turned to look. I don’t know what I was expecting, but all I saw was a tall, rather average looking man dressed in a conservative, cheap suit. His hair was a little thin and his voice a little high but other than that, he was average.

"I stood there a minute, looking at him, before remembering that one of them had said, that they would see me later.

"He said, ‘Would you like to come with me?’

"I said, "Someone will be along in a minute. I don’t like leaving my car out here unattended.

"He said, ‘Don’t worry about it. You won’t be needing it any longer.’

"I thought that was a rather esoteric thing to say. I didn’t think about the implications of it. I just sort of ignored it. I suppose I was more upset over the failure of my car than anything else. I thought the problem was shoddy workmanship rather than that nonsense about magnetic fields.

"The man asked, ‘Doctor, would you like to see what is causing the magnetic field that stopped your car?’

"I’ll admit here that he got my attention with the use of the title. I said, ‘You called me doctor.’

‘The man continued to stare and I hadn’t noticed him blink. I don’t know why that popped into my mind at that moment but it did. He said, ‘We understand that you hold a rather high degree from your university.’

"I nodded and said, ‘I hold no fewer than twenty-two degrees from various institutes of higher learning. I have also been given a few honorary degrees based on my work in thermodynamics, oceanography, and the fluid dynamic mechanism of meteorite pitting.’

"The man reached out, as if to take my hand and said, ‘Please, Doctor, come with me. There are a few friends that I wish you to meet.’"

Kelly stopped his narrative for a moment, drained his glass and then picked up the water as some sort of chaser. He had stopped sweating and was now cold as the air conditioning had caught up with the heat of the afternoon. He took the time to look at the audience. There were waiting for him to continue.

"Well," he said, "there didn’t seem to be anything that I could do about the car, and there was no traffic to help me. There was a house a couple of hundred yards away with a single light burning and I figured that I could use their land line, if they had one. I maybe could get someone there to help me out or to give me a ride. I agreed to go with him, figuring that was where he wanted me to go.

"We crossed the road, walked down a slight slope to a ditch, used a couple of big rocks to avoid the shallow water and stepped to a barb wire fence. He held the middle strand out of the way for me and then I did the same for him. I wondered where we were going because we weren’t walking toward the house... but I figured, what the hell. I had never really been out there. We walked across a plowed field and then to a tree line....

"It was then that I understood exactly what was happening to me. Exactly."

Kelly stopped again and stared at the crowd. Idly, his mind clicked on the phrase, pregnant pause. He had the audience and was keeping them by making them wait to find out the answer. Let them devise images of what he had seen. Let them imagine what was happening to him. Let them speculate. Let them condition themselves.

"It was about twenty-five or thirty feet tall and probably seventy feet long," he said. "There were dim lights around the center of it and it stood on three telescoping legs. I saw a ramp leading down, to the ground."

This hesitation was shorter. He said, "Like many of you, I didn’t believe. Not until the minute is saw it but I couldn’t deny what I was seeing. Probably one the Air Force would label as swamp gas or a misinterpretation of a natural phenomenon... This one had the classic saucer shape, one size fits all, and the color of your choice.

"The man gestured toward the ramp and said, ‘Go on up. They’re waiting to meet you.’

"At this point there didn’t seem to be any harm in it. The man had done nothing to force me to come with him. He had asked. And Richard Dryfeuss walked right into the spacecraft in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The aliens were friendly... well, the ones that we’re spewing acid and hugging your face.

"So I walked right up the ramp.

"The interior was nothing like I thought it would be. The whole room... the whole cabin... was bare. The floor was smooth. So were the walls. The ceiling was lost in a bright glare. At the far end I could see a number of figures, on the small side, but I couldn’t really tell.

"The man walked to the center of the cabin and spoke in some kind of a strange language like nothing I’ve ever heard, gestured at me and then said, in English, ‘This is Doctor David Kelly, the brightest Earthman alive today.’"

Kelly smiled. "I know. I know. But that’s what he said. Really. Not that I deserved the distinction.

"Anyway, he kept going with the description of my accomplishments, using the words that I, myself, have used for years. He listed all the fake degrees, all the inventions created by someone else, the war record I made up. Everything. On and on, as if he had memorized everything that I have ever said in the last twenty years. Every damned lie."

There was a murmur in the room. They were used to Kelly and his tall tales, but the one thing that had been consistent, the one thing that connected every thread was his insistence that his stories were all true. He told each one with the same enthusiasm that he told all the others, almost demanding that all who heard accept those lies as the truth. But he had never attempted to prove a new tale was true by exposing all the others as lies.

He was telling them, that unlike the pathological liar who told his tales, believing them himself, he knew the difference.

In one sense, he was violating the unwritten code among them. He could say anything he wanted and they would not challenge him by asking for proof. In return, he would believe them without asking for proof. And now here he was, standing in front of them, challenging all his statements to them and almost gloating over the fact that he had lied and lied and lied.

"Those creatures, I won’t call them men because they had only the slightest resemblance to me, came forward. They seemed to be discussing something in that strange language of theirs. The man with me tilted his head to one side as if listening, and then translated. ‘They all have questions if you would be good enough to answer them.’

"I told him that I would be happy to share my vast knowledge." Kelly winched at the comment and then said, "Yes, that is what I said. My vast knowledge.

"Anyway, he said, ‘First we would like to know the state of your space program.’

"That seemed like a harmless question and my first inclination was to say, ‘Florida.’

"Instead, I said that they probably knew that we had reached our moon, our natural satellite a number of years ago.

"‘With that goal reached,’ I said, ‘Six months early I might add, we shifted our emphasis to other things. We have sent probes to all the planets in our system and out into the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud, and launched additional probes to other solar systems.’

"I did not mention that the probe sent out of the solar system was a simple spacecraft that would never return and probably wouldn’t be to another system for eighty or ninety thousand years.

"This news seemed to upset them a little bit, but they went onto other subjects. They asked about our weather, our weapons, our military forces, the state of our atomic weapons, the histories of various nations and the attitude of various peoples.

"Probing questions that seemed to have some sort of focus. I mean, they weren’t random questions. They had a point but didn’t want me to figure out that point. It was as if they asked the wrong question, they would spoil the game or give away a big secret.

"After a while of this, I began to grow tired of it. Now you people know that I like to spin a story and can sometimes be goaded, with very little effort, into talking until late at night, long after others have grown tired and gone home. But this is at a party or a bar where we’re all comfortable and the booze is flowing and the Buffalo wings are coming. But these people... these things just kept me standing there as if they had never heard of a chair and never thought to offer a drink. I was tired, bored, thirsty and hungry and I suggested that I be allowed to return to my car.

"As I turned toward the ramp, the man who had brought me to the craft, put his hand on my arm and said, ‘We can’t allow you to return. You have been warned.’

"‘Warned?’ I said. ‘Warned about what? I haven’t been warned. But it’s getting late and I want to go home.’

"The creature. The man, didn’t remove his hand. He just said, ‘We can’t return someone of your superior intellect. You would be too much of a danger.’

"Honest, that’s what he said. That I would be too much of a danger. And suddenly, in my second flash of insight that night, I realized what they were talking about. These weren’t the darling little creatures of E.T., or the friendly aliens of Close Encounters. These guys were the beginning of the invasion. The reconnaissance force. The scouts who were attempting to learn all they could about the planet Earth. To find out how strong we were. To find out what kind of a fight we could put up.

"For a moment I was stunned. I had answered all their questions. I had told them about our defunct space program as if it was as robust and inventive as it once had been.

"And I told them about the military. An Army that was limited to weapons as defined by the Geneva Accords as if there was a humane way to kill someone. I had not told them about an Army that was fighting conflicts in some of the most inhospitable terrain in the world, worn out from a decade of those wars and that was spread about the world in policing actions.

"And on and on. Told them what they wanted to know, making it up as I went along and them believing it all as if I was compelled someway to tell the truth. I went on and on, enjoying my role as the smartest man on Earth. And I was turning out to be the dumbest. I had had the misfortune of contacting the enemy first and because they had stroked my ego, I had given them everything they asked for so they could invade.

"No, it’s worse than that. I gave them the reason to invade. I suggested that we would be able to find their home and wipe it out. Oh, not in so many words, but I was telling them we were traveling among the stars. That we had explored the other planets, and the moons of those planets, never mentioning that all that exploration was done by robotic probes controlled from Earth. I didn’t tell them that our space program was in disarray because too many people couldn’t see the real benefits of it. They just thought of money being blasted into space."

Kelly looked down at the floor and shook his head. "It was quite the shock, after living one way for all those years and believing, for all those years, that I was harming no one. A shock to learn, because of my own big mouth, I might have destroyed everything that the human race had ever built and I mean everything."

Kelly sighed. "Well, I knew that I might be able to save the day. I mean, these creatures had to be pretty clever themselves. They had managed to short circuit relativity by hopping through space. If they had known much about Earth I doubt that I could have fooled them for long. So, for once I decided to tell the truth. I could reverse everything that I had said. If I could do that, then I might be able to turn off the invasion."

The audience stirred and for the first time since he had walked into the room, Kelly smiled. He said, "Yes, I know. My ego knows no bounds. But I was in the right place at the right time. Maybe I could change some of their attitudes by adding to what I had already said.

"So, rather than demanding that I be let go, I decided to stay and tell them everything that I could. But to add a little spice to it. Liven up the stories a little for the audience. To make everything bigger and better and bolder. Make them think that they couldn’t invade Earth because of who we really were. Not knowing their time table, I don’t know if I was successful and probably will never know for sure, but I tried. Oh, Lord, I tried.

"They took the questioning back to our space program. I had told them that we had launched a number of probes and that things had been slow for the last few years. They wanted to know why.

"So, I told them. We had solved the problems of interstellar flight. We could get anywhere in this galaxy, almost immediately. A strange device that we had developed that worked along the lines of thought. We could visualize where we wanted to go and with the speed of thought, we could get there, taking with us all that we needed. We could drag all the equipment along with us that we wanted. But with this capability, we didn’t need artificial craft and that was why the space program was in disarray. We kept it going as sort of a hobby.

"And, of course, I told them of the super weapons we had developed. Planet killing weapons. Weapons that could cause a sun to explode. We didn’t keep those sorts of things on Earth because they were far too dangerous. We stored them on other planets in other systems. We could retrieve them in seconds, if we needed them for some reason.

"I made sure they understood the sacrifices that we have made to protect our freedoms and our way of life. About men and women who fought to the death rather than surrender. Lessons from history. Half remembered movies and TV shows. Anything that I could think of because I needed to convince them that we would fight on and on as necessary.

"I told them of the great inventions we don’t use. The invention that could terra-form a planet and would make it into a paradise. A paradise as defined by us and not necessarily those who happened to reside on that planet. We didn’t use it on Earth because we liked the unpredictability of the weather. We didn’t use it on Mars, because the gravity was too light for us and if we increased that, we would tend to complicate the dynamics of the Solar System. We’d tried it on planets around other stars and some of our people now inhabited those planets."

Kelly laughed. "That last got their attention because they stopped asking questions and went off to confer. It looked as if it got quite heated at some points but I didn’t know. Maybe then don’t get angry. They would sometimes gesture at me and I think they were trying to figure out what was going on.

"Finally the man came over and said, ‘I think it is time for you to leave.’ No preliminaries. No pleasantries. Just time for me to leave.

"I said, ‘I thought I had been warned.’

"He pushed me toward the ramp, which was opening again, and said, ‘I don’t think it matters now. Just get out.’

"Well, I did notice his attitude had changed. He wasn’t polite like he had been and he seemed to be a little scared of me. I wanted to get out so I walked down the ramp. Minutes later I found myself standing by the highway. A car had stopped behind mine. I crossed the road and saw a deputy sheriff. He wanted to know if everything was all right and I told him my car had stalled, but I thought I could get it running now. I climbed in, turned the key and it started right up. I waved at the deputy and he waved back.

"I’ve had a chance to think about this, and I think I know what happened. These creatures, these aliens, who wanted to invade Earth, didn’t have the concept of a lie. They believed everything I told them because they had never run into anyone, or anything, that would lie. They believed everything I told them without looking for proof. When I told them about our inventions, our military capabilities, our ability to destroy whole planets, they believed me. When they compared their ability to ours, they were convinced that they couldn’t strike Earth. They didn’t even know that we had colonies on other worlds which might retaliate. They thought our might far outstripped theirs. I think they decided to find someone else to pick on."

Kelly reached to his side and picked up the newspaper. "This was on sale as I came in. I know you people don’t believe me. I don’t expect it. But look at the headline. It says, ‘SAUCERS SIGHTED OVER CAPITAL.’ You see, there were flying saucers here, but they’ve gone now."

There was a moment of silence and then applause. Loud and long. Before it died out, the people were standing up. First just one, then two and then everyone. The whole group was up clapping and cheering.

Kelly held the newspaper high. It was his only piece of evidence because there had been nothing to grab in the spaceship. Nothing that he could get from them to prove his story. That’s what he told them when the cheering finally quieted and everyone was in his or her seat.

At the very end, after an extra hour, as the audience had tried to wring every little detail from him, one of the men in the back stood up and asked, in violation of their protocol, "Come on, Dave, is this the truth?"

Kelly leaned on the rostrum and clasped his hands in front of him. He stared at the floor as if framing his reply.

Finally he looked up and said the last word he would ever say on the subject. "Wouldn’t you like to know."