Steampunk Prime_ A Vintage Steampunk Reader - Mike Ashley [115]
What may be surprising about the following story is that it’s written by Frank L. Packard (1877-1942). Packard was a frequent contributor to the pulp magazines and was best known for his Raffles-like character Jimmie Dale: a socialite playboy by day but a safe-cracker and house-breaker by night. But the creation of Jimmie Dale was still eight years away when Packard wrote “An Interplanetary Rupture”. The story may have been inspired by the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5 for which President Theodore Roosevelt served as mediator at the peace conference which resulted in the Treaty of Portsmouth in September 1905. — M.A.
ON THE ELEVENTH DAY OF AUGUST, in the year of our Lord three thousand one hundred and two, the city of Washington, capital of the World, was the scene of unusual commotion. Rumors of the rupture with Mercury were current. It was true that Earth’s minister to that planet had not been recalled, and that Mercury’ ambassador was still in Washington; but this in no way disguised the act that relations between the two planets were strained to their breaking point.
The enormous Edifice of Deliberations, erected at a cost of one billion of dollars, teemed with bustling humanity, and emanated a sense of tremendous activity.
The House of Delegates was in continuous session. Speeches of members from the States of Russia, Germany France, and South America were warlike in their tone, rising to a white heat of eloquence to lose some of their intensity against the milder and more prudent counsel of the honorable members from England, America, China, and Japan. Yet from all, even to the smaller States of Holland and Belgium, there was an undertone that plainly evidenced the fact that the Assembly of the World would brook no humiliation.
In the circular chamber that occupied the eastern wing of the building the Supreme Council of Earth were seated: twelve men, the clearest, shrewdest brains upon the Globe. The room was bare of decoration save that from the ceiling hung festooned the national banner, the flag of the World, blood red with a white dove in its center, adopted A.D. two thousand five hundred and thirty-two, at the confederation of Earth’s divisions into one vast nation under one government and one Head.
The Head, Mr. Sasoa, was speaking with great calmness:
“Gentlemen.” He said. “Interference with the astral Mizar is unquestionably a casus belli. Ceded to us by interplanetary treaty in two thousand nine hundred and seventy, Mercury’s present action cannot be considered in any light but one of impertinent intrusion upon our sovereign rights.”
The members of the cabinet bowed their heads in grave assent.
The Most Honorable Mr. Sasoa then continued: “It has never been Earth’s desire to pursue a policy of colonization: to extend her lawful boundaries of empire beyond her own immediate sphere. You are all thoroughly conversant with the conditions that brought Mizar under our government and control. For over an hundred years this dependency has been wisely and prudentially governed, and today I believe we are justified in asserting that our rule has been efficacious, not only to our own commerce, but to the welfare of the universe at large.
“Mizar’s value as a strategical base is incalculable, and realizing this, Mercury has stopped at nothing to possess himself of this astral. The trickery that has at last resulted in Mizar’s petition to Mercury to be received as his dependency, and their coincident refutation of this government’s authority is but the culmination of the despicable policy Mercury has pursued.
“Gentlemen, you are here assembled for the gravest duty that has ever fallen to the lot of an Earther. I hold in my hand