“You mean you could move a girl through some four or five thousand miles of space!” — Hammond

“You don’t understand. She wouldn’t come through space at all, but through space-time, through the continuum, which is a very different thing.” — Charlie King

Yes indeed, it is, and that’s what this fun early pulp story from the great Jack Williamson deals with in the literary equivalent of a Saturday morning serial adventure of the 1930s. First published in the March 1931 issue of Astounding Stories Magazine, The Meteor Girl is a typically well-written Jack Williamson story. He would get better in a few years, but this is still fun as very early Science Fiction pulp.

Hammond’s friend Charlie King is obsessed with science, particularly Einstein and thoughts of how the space-time continuum might work. The two run an air service, using the Golden Gull to make money while Charlie toys with mathematical equations. He’s so engrossed in them, his wealthy girlfriend is breaking up with him over it. But then a meteor falls from the sky, a ball of blue fire that when examined, is discovered to be a window to another world, a Fourth Dimension. The images Hammond and Charlie see are vast and deep, viewed across a great ocean.

To their horror, especially Charlie’s, they see the shipwreck of the Valhalla of the Red Star Line, and the terrible peril of Virginia. What happens next is a lot of derring do, both mathematical and physical, as a plan gone awry leads to a startling discovery, and a race against time itself. It’s great fun on a Saturday afternoon serial level, with an added bonus of being well-written. Williamson’s descriptions and gift for great movement, even at this stage of his career, are clearly evident.

I’d probably rank The Meteor Girl on a par with The Lake of Light as an early pulp story of Williamson. Like all of his pulp work, it’s great fun. The Astounding Stories, March 1931 issue is available Free at Gutenberg. The issue also includes a story from another Science Fiction legend, Ray Cummings, called Beyond the Vanishing Point. It really is a bonus, because Beyond the Vanishing Point isn’t serialized in parts, but the full novelette. ( )