Operation Earthworm

Septimus Spink didn't need to read Jules Verne's "Journey to
the Center of the Earth." He had more amazing ideas of his own.


_Interplanetary Press, Circa 2022--Septimus Spink, the first Earthman to
reach and return from New Mu in a flying saucer, threw a hydroactive
bombshell into the meeting of the leading cosmogonists at the University
of Cincinnatus today. The amazing Spink, uninvited, crashed this august
body of scientists and laughed at a statement made by Professor Apsox
Zalpha as to the origin of Earth and other planets._

_"That theory is older than the discovery of the antiquated zipper,"
Spink orated. "Ha, you big plexidomes still believe the Earth was
condensed from a filament, and was ejected by the sun under the
gravitational attraction of a big star passing close to the Earth's
surface. First it was a liquid drop and cooling solidified it after a
period of a few million years. You citizens still think it has a liquid
core. Some of you think it is pretty hot inside like they had atomic
furnaces all fired up. Ha, the exterior ain't so hot either what with
taxes we have to pay after seven wars."_

_Professor Yzylch Mgogylvy, of the University of Juno, took violent
exception to Septimus Spink's derisive attitude and stoutly defended the
theory of adiabatic expansion. It was at this juncture that Spink
practically disintegrated the meeting._

_"For the last seventy years," he orated, "all we have thought about was
outer space. All that we have been hepped up about is what is up in the
attic and have forgot the cellar. What proof has any knucklehelmet got
that nobody lives far under the coal mines and the oil pockets?
Something lives everywhere! Adam never believed anythin' lived in water
until he was bit by a crab. Gentlemen, I am announcin' for the benefit
of the press and everybody from here to Mars and Jupiter and back that I
intend to explore inner space! I have already got the project
underway."_

_A near panic ensued as representatives of the press made for the
audio-viso stellartypes. "You think volcanoes are caused by heat
generated far down inside the earth. They are only boils or carbuncles.
Awright, where do earthquakes come from?" Here Spink laughed once more.
"They are elastic waves sent out through the body of the Earth, huh?
Their observed times of transmission give a means of finding their
velocities of propagation at great depths. I read that in a book that
should be in the Terra-firmament Institute along with the Spirit of St.
Louis."_