The Undersea Tube

"The Undersea Tube" by L. Taylor Hansen is a science fiction story centered on a grand plan to build an underwater railroad linking cities across the Atlantic. The story moves forward as the main character retells the terrible destruction inside the Tube. It goes into the amazing engineering, worries about safety, and strange things found while building it. He struggles with what happened, particularly the concerns of his engineer friend about a dangerous crack caused by an earthquake. During a trip through the Tube, disastrous happenings cause the train to crash, throwing him into a weird underground place containing a magical city and echoes of an old civilization. He meets a child running from lava and a strange old man, which make the story even more unreal. The tale asks big questions about human ambition, the risks of new inventions, and the unsolved secrets of vanished societies.