by Jimmy Guieu
“We’re going to capture the radio messages sent by the White Sands base to the technicians in their mobile observation posts whose mission is to pick up the rocket. You’ll first hear the voices of the Earthlings speaking in their own language and after lowering the volume you’ll get the instant translation out of the electronic translator. Listen.”
The assembly heard the voice of an American technician coming from above:
White Sands Headquarters to all tracking stations… White Sands Headquarters to all tracking stations… The rocket is fallen 32 miles east of Caballo and 47 miles north of Tularosa near point 75 B 7.
The Earthling’s voice faded into an indistinct murmur under the monotone voice of the electronic translator changing the message into the universal language of the Federated Worlds.
“Join up at point 75 B 7. A helicopter has already taken off and is heading out there. Meet up with it. The helicopter will give you the exact coordinates of the landing. Over and out.”
Fohag stood up and commented on the event.
“This is the third guided missile sent by the Earthlings to the zone around our astrobase 1. When they discovered the presence of our two space bases the General Staff of the Earth race called ‘American’ felt quite a fright10. The superior officers immediately thought that the astronomers had not spotted two meteors but two artificial satellites launched by the Earthling Russians, with whom they do not have friendly relations. The first observation rocket that they sent reached only 350 miles altitude. That was not enough for them to film our astrobase 1, which orbits at over 400 miles from the surface of the planet. Moreover, an error in calculation apparently ruined the test and instead of passing under the orbit where our base should have been the rocket was 70 miles off. The test, therefore, was a failure.
“However, the second one was not. This time the rocket ascended to almost 400 miles and was within five or six miles of our base. The photos it brought back must have stupefied whoever studied them. We examined them ourselves on our viewer. Even though blurry they still showed a perfectly round mass with a light source on top: the directional beam that keeps astrobase 1 in contact with us here. Despite these photos certain members of the General Staff remained doubtful. But what this latest rocket brings back should be able to convince them. In fact, this missile reached over 400 miles altitude and was only three miles from the base.”
After a pause Fohag concluded, “Now, every team should go to their operational HQ. Orders are awaiting you to continue the observation exercises and the brief landings on the planet.”
The Polarian chief who had already spoken stood up and said, “Over the coming K’bogs, Wolfians, Centaurians and Polarians from this section will be operating simultaneously on T27. At the end of this period of joint operations we’ll meet again to compare our results.”
In another section of astrobase 2, teams made up of all three races from the Space Commandos got ready to leave the sphere and accomplish their separate missions. A first group of 80 Fimn’has—or Flying Saucers—left the huge interior astrodromes to scatter into space. These orange spaceships, because of their small size (20 feet in diameter), were occupied by Centaurians, the small, human-shaped beings barely three feet tall. As they gradually separated from one another the Fimn’has headed for the various regions on earth that they would fly over. Some shot across the skies of France like a meteor; others flew over Belgium, England, Switzerland, Spain or Italy. Some landed in one country or another, unleashing terror among the “primitives” who saw them.
A second squadron of 80 ships came out of the wide-open hatch in the side of the fourth upper section of the astrobase. These discs were going to fly over the lesser known regions of Africa, Asia and the poles. This mission fell upon the Wolfians in their 25-foot ships.
A third and final squadron made up of both types of ships as well as even bigger ones up to 50 feet in diameter because piloted by almost human Polarians, left the mid-section of the base for interplanetary zones. With 50 ships this Space Commando was going to make an inspection of the permanent bases set up on ST28, ST26 and ST29, conventional galactic names representing Earth’s satellite, the Moon, and the planets Venus and Mars.
Flying in triangular formation the Fimn’has aimed the directional magnetic beams in their cones at ST28, the Moon. At the head of the triangle was the spaceship piloted by Zimko, Chief of the Space Commandos, a well-built Polarian, very tan, with short, black, wavy hair and one loose lock curled stubbornly on his forehead. His upper lip bore a little black moustache, well-groomed, that would have made him the envy of a Terrestrial native like Robert Taylor or Errol Flynn.11
A sapphire blue bodysuit hugged his muscular chest and athletic legs. Over his tight black shorts he wore a huge belt that looked like it was made of gold leather and accentuated his “V-shaped” figure. Two big disintegrator pistols hung at his sides, swinging on his hips. On his belly was a diamond-shaped device about the size of a pack of cigarettes that contained a tiny but powerful two-way radio. This device turned on automatically to send an SOS if he were wounded and unable to use his telepathic abilities to communicate with his own or with his Wolfian and Centaurian allies. On his left wrist, finally, he wore a big watch with three screens that doubled as a radiation detector. The three screens told him: the time on the main planet of the solar system where the Commando was operating; the Universal Time on the astrobases of said solar system; and the time in the capital of the “mother planet” of the Polarians.
In the cockpit was another “Man from Outer Space,” Oïpku, Chief of the Lunar base who was going back to his post.
The incredible distance separating astrobase 2 from the Moon (240,000 miles on average) was covered in ten minutes by the mixed squadron that was now flying over the bright side of the Earth’s satellite. Slowing down to a cruising speed of 1,200 mph, three minutes later the 50 spaceships, propelled by the energy of sub-cosmic rays to create a powerful magnetic field, came to a halt 60 miles above the Aristarchus crater.
As far as the eye could see the chalky white lunar ground looked pocked by countless craters of different sizes, scarred with sharp cracks, and fenced in here and there by jagged rocky chains standing out against the inky black of space. The squadron dropped straight down into the Aristarchus crater in the middle of which stood a gigantic, transparent dome almost half a mile high and over one mile wide that sheltered the lunar base, a fantastic city with emerald green buildings sparkling with the rays of the sun through the artificial atmosphere. The buildings, arranged in tiers, formed a giant pyramid whose “steps” were flat roofs used as aero-garages or decorated with magnificent hanging gardens. Strange flowers, as high as trees on Earth, swayed their colorful corollas in the warm breeze produced by the blowers built halfway up around the protective dome.
A bright beam of purple light coming from an airtight turret at the top of the transparent dome swept across the black sky. It soon caught the descending squadron, shined a weird light under the spaceships, then went off to probe outer space over the base. The 50 Fimn’has landed gently on the astrodrome encircling the dome. From the first ship Zimko and the Chief of the lunar base stepped out. Walking effortlessly despite their cumbersome spacesuits the two Polarians headed for one of the many decompression chambers giving access to the base.
Since Zimko could not stay more than an hour (T27 time) on the Moon the rest of his squadron did not leave their ships.
When they came into the dome the two spacemen quickly took off their helmets, tilting them back so they could breath the artificial atmosphere full of herbal scents. They took a raised path equipped with a moving gravito-magnetic field that brought them rapidly, at 1,300 feet off the ground, to the Technical Service for the Solar Observation Center on Mercury.
Everything in this building as well as the others was bright, awash in sunlight. They could breathe a restorative atmosphere, faintly light green and scented with an unidentifiable perfume. In a rectangular room (whose transparent
wall let in the sunrays filtered by the dome) a beautiful Polarian woman welcomed them. She graced her visitors with a gorgeous smile and raised her right hand, palm open, to her shoulder, the traditional universal greeting known on all the planets in the Galactic Confederation.
The two spacemen answered her with the same gesture and Zimko asked, “What’s in the last message sent by the robot-station on Mercury?”
The young woman typed a series of signs on an electronic wall keyboard and a monotone voice rang out, the “voice” of an electronic brain:
“The curve of magnetic variations of the ‘solar field’ will be at its lowest in one lunar month and 17 days. The activity of the solar prominences and other coronal phenomenon linked to sunspots will reach its maximum starting at the end of this time.”
The voice went silent and the young woman went to where a cabinet had just opened in the wall and she took a bluish metallo-plastex sheet on which was inscribed various graphs for the Fimn’has crews to illustrate the variations in the solar magnetic field. This information was terribly important for all the spaceships in a solar system. In fact, an abrupt “maximum boost” in the intensity of the magnetic field could be fatal to one or more spaceships caught in its impact zone. They had already mourned the loss of seven Fimn’has disintegrated by these swirling electrons spit out by the sun and crashing through the driving and lifting magnetic field of the flying discs.
Zimko and Chief of the lunar base leaned over and examined the graphs. They frowned.
“In around a month and a half, T27 time, we’ll have to be very cautious around Venus and even the Earth,” Zimko observed. “Like in the past we’ll have to interrupt our space operations from Mercury’s orbit up to Mars’ for a period of one Earth year. Only a few sporadic, very prudent flights will be made in this trouble zone… as few as possible.”
“These magnetic storms that happen pretty regularly are obviously a serious handicap for our ships,” Chief Oïpko commented.
The young technician smiled, “The cyclical reappearance of the Fimn’has flying over the Earth every two years should make the inhabitants pretty curious.”
“Not only curious but some of them, in forming hypotheses, are wondering if the ‘flying saucers’ don’t come from Mars because the planet reaches its perigee almost every two years. These Earthlings think that the ‘Martians’ wait for their planet to be close enough to Earth so the shorter distance between the two planets can be crossed more easily.”
The young woman and the two men laughed at this joke but Zimko calmed them down to say, “Let’s not laugh too much at the simple minds of the Earthlings. Everyone isn’t as primitive as you might think. And even if their hypotheses about us and are origins are wrong, some of them at least have the virtue of admitting not only the existence of flying saucers but also their extraterrestrial existence. Of course, these who are right are called dreamers or lunatics!”
Zimko took off from the Aristarchus crater at the head of the squadron followed by the 49 lenticular ships heading for Venus.
After setting his controls and letting the automatic astronavigator pilot the ship, he settled back comfortably in his soft chair to study the inspection report that Oïpko, the lunar base chief, had given him. Everything was in order. The laboratories and research centers studying the Earth’s satellite were carrying on their work, accumulating an impressive amount of scientific data of all kinds. Two other bases of research and observation were being built: one on the dark side and the other at the bottom of a big crevasse more than half a mile deep.
Some “archeological” digs had been undertaken in the Plato crater to get rid of the powdery matter piled up for millennia and uncover the ruins of the first Polarian base set up on the Moon at a time when the civilization of Atlantis (now buried) flourished on T27. In a brief account the report said that exploratory space squadrons had, over the past centuries, done some digging in this crater and on the surface of the satellite. It was specified parenthetically that the removal of dust had changed the floor of the crater and some Earth astronomers had been intrigued by the slight modifications, especially by the weird flashes of light—the giant spotlights—that showed up once in a while in this crater12.
Zimko smiled thinking about the faces of the terrestrial astronomers when they would learn one day, from the very mouths of the men from space, that these craters sheltered observations bases and these “lights” and other strange signs had really seen by many of their fellows… quickly put down to optical illusions and hallucinations.
The Polarian turned on his space viewer and walked up to the visual transmitter—a tiny blue lens—blinking over the control panel at eye level. On the tilted screen appeared the blackish, hairy face of a Wolfian with pink, oval eyes. Lit up by the lens of his own transmitter the long, stiff whiskers that grew on its chin and cheeks look like blue steel spikes.
“Greetings, Tim’hu,” the Man from Outer Space raised his right hand.
The Wolfian’s big eyes turned a little green, sunk into their sockets, then slowly came back to their normal place, popping out, and turned pink. “Peace to you, Zimko,” he spoke in the universal language.
“I’d like to refer to your vast, historical knowledge, Tim’hu,” Zimko began. “And not only your learning but also your deep wisdom.”
“Speak, brother. Tim’hu will be happy to help with his modest knowledge.”
“When the Polarians discovered the planet Mongan tens of thousands of years ago in the solar system that the Earthlings call Wolf 359, what were the reactions of the ancient Wolfians? This episode in Galactic History could tell me what the future reactions of Earth inhabitants might be. Aren’t they at the same ‘historical’ stage as you Wolfians were when our exploration squads entered your world?”
“Your question is relevant, Zimko. But you are forgetting that we Wolfians have a mental formation, a psyche and an intelligence fundamentally different from the Earthlings who have the same shape as you. Although the reactions of our ancestors were the same as the first astonished reactions of the Earthlings when they saw strange ‘flying machines’ appear in the sky, it wasn’t the same afterward. The Wolfians were unable to imagine that different beings could exist outside their planet Mongan. Our ancestors had reached a high level of civilization, spiritual development and I’d even say technology, relatively speaking. They had big cities, buildings perfectly organized for their mode of existence… almost contemplative and they lived very happily. However, they lacked one important things that gives a very particular orientation to the minds of other races in the galaxy. I’m talking about stars, the incommensurable sprinkling of suns that eyes contemplating the sky can see on those clear nights during what the Earthlings call summer.
“Because our ancestors were unaware of stars. It was impossible for them to imagine that other Mongans existed tens, hundreds or thousands of light years away. And this strange shortcoming in their minds is understandable when you know that Mongan is perpetually clouded by a thick atmosphere filled with nitrogen, carbon dioxide, methane and ammonia gas. This opaque cloak barely lets the rays of our own sun through, giving us a feeble heat. Our ancestors lived in a kind of milky fog and their organs were adapted to very particular physical conditions.
“When your first spaceships crossed the higher strata of our atmosphere and came into the less dense biosphere of Mongan, we wondered what the mysterious, disc-shaped flying creatures could be. Were they hitherto unknown birds? Were they sent by K’tang, the Fire Spirit in the Sky, which is what we called the atmospheric lightning? Or were they visions caused by using too much Pzond, a wild vine that grows in our gardens and whose heady perfume often causes vivid hallucinations?
“Our ancestors could never have imagined that beings from another planet were watching them. Unable to understand what the flying discs were, we ended up accepting them as real and as an impenetrable mystery of what you Polarians or the Earthlings would call Destiny or the Unknowable.
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��For years your spaceships flew over our lands, gathering evidence, probing our atmosphere and thanks to your detection devices and your paroptic vision studying the forms of Wolfian life and social, economic and spiritual organization. Convinced that we were peaceful, gentle and wise your ancestors, Zimko, dared to land near a small town. A few Polarians in spacesuits left their Fimn’has and cautiously approached two Wolfians. Naturally, they were afraid and ran away to watch the ‘monsters’ from farther away as they came out of the famous, mysterious objects that had been haunting their air for years. Seeing that the Polarians were not chasing them but on the contrary stood still, holding out their arms, they ended up coming back. Timidly at first, then more boldly they came within a few feet of your ancestors.
“Using their audiophones they spoke two or three words that they obviously didn’t understand, but softly so as not to scare them, then they went back into their Fimn’has and took off, leaving the Wolfians stupefied. They ran back to their town, told their adventure and soon were summoned by the Kn’ag, the Chief of the place. And here is where the Wolfians’ reaction will be fundamentally different from the Earthlings’.
“When the Kn’ag heard the story of the two villagers, he thanked them and right away send his report to the Grand Master of Mongan, the Supreme Sovereign. Not for one instant, Zimko, did my ancestors doubt the word of the witnesses and their strange encounter. Since lying is an abominable act for Wolfians, akin to a crime, no one thought that the story could have been made up. For our ancestors, just like for us today, the word of a Wolfian is sacred. What is said, is. Our legendary sincerity, of course, is known throughout the Federated Worlds in that old saying, Honest as a Monganian!
“So, we waited patiently for another meeting and welcomed your ancestors with joy… even though we were totally ignorant of who they were, where they came from and how.”
Zimko thought about this for a long time before responding with a smile, “My ancestors quickly made contact with yours because they knew they were dealing with peaceful beings, fundamentally good. I understand now the difference that you explained between your people and those of T27. The Wolfians were, and still are, sensible whereas the Earthlings, despite their technical development, are still violent barbarians. Lying holds sway among them. Deceit and vileness are masters. Not everyone is like that, fortunately, but the human mind is so full of these traces of dark paganism that it’s perpetually on the defensive. Everything extraordinary and wondrous is doubted. Everything that seems to partake of the supernatural—at least the idea that the Earthlings have of it—is right away called hallucinations, hoaxes… or head injury, to use the term a newspaper there used to explain the so-called ‘vision’ of the man who saw two Centaurians and their Fimn’has land on the train tracks.”
