Here he is again, the irrepressible Septimus Spink, in a tale as rollicking asan elder giant juggling the stars and the planets in his great, golden handsand laughing mirthfully as one tiny world—our own—goes spinning awayfrom him into caverns measureless to man. With specifications drawn to scale,Joe Archibald, whose versatility with the quill never ceases to amaze us, hasmanaged with slangy insouciance to achieve a rare triumph over space andtime, and to aureole Spink in a resplendent sunburst of imperishable renown.
Septimus Spink didn't need to read Jules Verne's "Journey tothe Center of the Earth." He had more amazing ideas of his own.
Interplanetary Press, Circa 2022—SeptimusSpink, the first Earthmanto reach and return from NewMu in a flying saucer, threw ahydroactive bombshell into themeeting of the leading cosmogonistsat the University of Cincinnatus today.The amazing Spink, uninvited,crashed this august body of scientistsand laughed at a statementmade by Professor Apsox Zalpha asto the origin of Earth and otherplanets.
"That theory is older than thediscovery of the antiquated zipper,"Spink orated. "Ha, you big plexidomesstill believe the Earth wascondensed from a filament, and wasejected by the sun under the gravitationalattraction of a big star passingclose to the Earth's surface.First it was a liquid drop and coolingsolidified it after a period of afew million years. You citizens stillthink it has a liquid core. Some ofyou think it is pretty hot inside likethey had atomic furnaces all firedup. Ha, the exterior ain't so hoteither what with taxes we have topay after seven wars."
Professor Yzylch Mgogylvy, ofthe University of Juno, took violentexception to Septimus Spink's derisiveattitude and stoutly defendedthe theory of adiabatic expansion.It was at this juncture that Spinkpractically disintegrated the meeting.
"For the last seventy years," heorated, "all we have thought aboutwas outer space. All that wehave been hepped up about is whatis up in the attic and have forgotthe cellar. What proof has anyknucklehelmet got that nobody livesfar under the coal mines and the oilpockets? Something lives everywhere!Adam never believed anythin'lived in water until he was bitby a crab. Gentlemen, I am announcin'for the benefit of the press andeverybody from here to Mars andJupiter and back that I intend toexplore inner space! I have alreadygot the project underway."
A near panic ensued as representativesof the press made for theaudio-viso stellartypes. "You thinkvolcanoes are caused by heat generatedfar down inside the earth. Theyare only boils or carbuncles. Awright,where do earthquakes comefrom?" Here Spink laughed oncemore. "They are elastic waves sentout through the body of the Earth,huh? Their observed times of transmissiongive a means of findingtheir velocities of propagation atgreat depths. I read that in a bookthat should be in the Terra-firmamentInstitute along with the Spiritof St. Louis."
Septimus Spink walked out at thispoint, surrounded by Interplanetaryscribes, one of whom was Exmud R.Zmorro. Spink informed the FourteenthEstate that he would let themhave a gander at the model of hisinner space machine in due time.He inferred that one of his financialbackers in the fabulous enterprisewas Aquintax Djupont, andthat the fact that Djupont had recentlybeen brain-washed at theNeuropsychiatorium in Metropolitahad no bearing on the case whatsoever.
I am seeing and listening to that