Polarian-Denebian War 4: Space Commandos

by Jimmy Guieu

  “That’s awful!” Zendka sniveled.

  Tink gave two or three orders to his comrades standing around him, hoping they would have the courage to act if an adult tried to stop the young Polarian from using the space transmitter.

  Tink sidled up next to his father—oblivious to his presence—and boldly started pushing, off and on, a red button in the middle of the slanted panel. With a wave of his hand he made his friends squat down so that they would not be in the field of vision. Tink repeated the operation making sure that he stayed out of the picture as well.

  B’tna scurried up to him and whispered, “What are you doing?”

  “This button, with three different clicks, changes the wavelengths for the emergency channel of the Space Commandos. When it’s pressed down completely the wavelength goes from one size to another but it has to be done at a specific moment of Universal Time used in this solar system and in very specific conditions that the Commandos know about. Now, by pressing it down not completely but a bunch of times in a row and not at the good time, I’m messing with all the Space Commando communications, even if they’re not in contact with us. There’s got to be a technician on a ship who’ll get annoyed and use his paroptic vision to find the source of these variations in Gossenka waves, as they’re called.”

  The doll-like face of B’tna lit up with a big smile and Tink, smiling back, read the admiration in her little eyes.

  All of a sudden Tink froze. A psychic image had just flashed through his mind. He felt like he had “seen” mentally the face of a Polarian but the fleeting vision had disappeared. After a few seconds another face appeared, along with a few scraps of thought. Concentrating with all his (still young) psychic might, he sent out a mental call:

  “Alert for all Space Commandos. Alert for all Space Commandos. Message for Zimko. Message for Zimko.”

  A psychic image burned into his mind. At first a little hazy it quickly took shape and was accompanied with this thought: What is going on?

  The words now rang clearly in his brain’s receptive zones.

  “I’m calling Zimko, Chief of the Space Commandos. Don’t use the tele-transmitter. Answer by psychic message.”

  The Polarian on a reconnaissance flight outside Jupiter’s orbit had been intrigued by the purple flashes on his screen. Where were these Gossenka wave variations coming from? As Tink had hoped, his plan was working.

  The Polarian pilot, puzzled by the constant disturbance, used his paroptic vision and probed the different transmission centers in the solar system. A few minutes later he focused his vision on Rynka, the Martian base, where the disturbances originated. Now he was “seeing” clearly the 12- or 13-year old boy, his hand pressing the red button and obviously trying to stay out of sight of the viewer.

  He also noticed the presence of a group of young Centaurians and Wolfians along with boys and girls of his race. What were they doing in the Space Communications Center where access was forbidden to anyone outside this service?

  A deeper psychic probe into each of them told him the frightening truth. All the mental images—all the same—perceived at the same time assured him of the accuracy of his perceptions: except for these 40 young kids the population of Rynka was under the psychic control of the Denebians! Without understanding how they alone had escaped, he had to give in to the evidence.

  I’m going to alert Zimko immediately, Tink, he sent into his mind. You and your comrades must be very careful. Hide somewhere or else imitate your parents. Pretend to be totally passive. Copy all the others who are acting under orders from the Denebians. Don’t worry, Zimko will know what to do to free your parents and friends from the psychic control over them.

  The image of his face and the echo of his thoughts faded out of the young Polarian’s mind.

  With tears of joy trickling down his cheeks Tink whispered, “I did it… A reconnaissance pilot captured my mental call, as weak as it was. Without saying a single word into the space viewer our message was heard. Zimko will hear about it and come save us with the Space Commandos.”

  An armored door suddenly opened and made them jump. In the frame of the metal panel that had just slid open stood six Denebians, disgusting green creatures with reptile skin.

  Tink and his friends felt their legs wobble. A horrible feeling of panic seized them as they choked up, as if their throats were caught in a vice.

  “We didn’t catch your mental message but we quickly spotted the source of the Gossenka wave disturbances,” one of the Denebians snapped, walking up to a terrorized Tink. “Your little call for help is going to get Zimko here double quick. And that’s exactly what we want!”

  On astrobase 2 Fohag, the Wolfian Chief, was presiding over another assembly of almost 400 Polarians, Wolfians and Centaurians.

  “First of all,” he began, “as you will be able to see for yourselves once again the inhabitants of T27 are not yet ready to receive us intelligently. I’ll show you translations of the news being broadcast today in the Earthling press about the latest missions carried out by our ‘Probe Commandos’ with the goal of studying the reactions of the primitives who meet us unexpectedly. First here’s the translation of an article reporting in its way about a test by a Polarian pilot on a native of T27.”

  The big 3-D screen turned on. As if suspended in a bottomless pit the fluorescent characters started scrolling by, faithfully translating (in the universal language of the Federated Worlds) the newspaper article:

  The pilot of a flying cigar hugged me and spoke to me, a farmer confirmed.

  Limoges, September 14, 195415 A farmer in the town of Mouniéras, in the commune Bugeat (Corrèze), on the Plateau of Millevaches, Mr. Antoine Mazaud on September 10 had an extraordinary encounter that we never would have known about if it was not for his wife, who told the following story about her husband’s adventure.

  That night Mr. Antoine Mazaud was coming back from work in the fields. It was 8:30 pm and the night was falling in the countryside. The farmer took the sunken lane on which the thick bushes bordering it made the twilight even darker.

  All of a sudden he found himself face to face with a stranger of medium height, wearing a motorcycle helmet. Both of them were very surprised. When Mr. Mazaud made a defensive movement with his pitchfork, which he was carrying on his shoulder, the other came up to him quickly, holding out his hands, no doubt to assure his peaceful intentions.

  Fearing that he might not be understood he approached the farmer and while saying something incomprehensible he hugged him. Then, before Mazaud could get over his surprise he hopped over the hedge and sat inside a weird, cigar-shaped machine, 10 or 12 feet long. The machine, which was not lit up, shot straight up as quiet as a buzzing bee and disappeared to the west.

  When Mr. Mazaud returned home, about a mile away, his wife noticed how pale and strange he looked. He told her about his bizarre encounter but asked her not to tell anyone. “They’ll make fun of us,” he said.

  But the temptation was too strong and Mrs. Mazaud could not resist telling her neighbor, in strict secrecy of course. Her neighbor then told a travelling salesman who spread it around until… the whole country know about it. The police, the last to hear, only found out about it yesterday.

  Mr. Mazaud was questioned by the lieutenant in Ussel and repeated what he had told his wife. Unfortunately it was not possible to find any traces where the machine had landed. Mazaud, who has a spotless reputation, does not suffer from hallucinations.

  “This, then, is the first report by one of those brief contacts that have now become classic,” Fohag said. “According to what the newspapers on T27 report we can easily see that nine times out of ten the primitives who encounter our ships and their occupants say nothing about it. Most of the time it takes some slip-up to make them talk. If all the witnesses of our incursions told their stories, the papers wouldn’t have enough space to print any other news16.”

  “I don’t think their readers would lose anything if that happened,” a Polarian commented,
not trying to funny. “Crimes, robberies, murders, attacks, the fall of governments, revolutions, wars, all kinds of abuse. That’s the daily news in the Earth’s press. Of course a primitive could answer us that we, too, in spite of our extraordinary degree of evolution, are at war pretty often with the Denebians and the Procyonians. That’s right but these conflicts will end very soon. We’ve seen a period of total peace throughout our Federated Worlds over tens of millennia. It’s only the last few years that the Denebians and Procyonians, still refusing to join our Galactic Federation, decided to extend their zone of influence and try to annex the planets rich in natural resources but poor in evolved beings. We have always stopped them and the primitive races we saved from their slavery are eternally grateful. All we want, as far as we can, is to stop our enemies from harming the worlds they desire and this in not using radically destructive methods. However, if our enemies should present a serious threat to all the worlds, federated or not, we will be forced to use… the most formidable, frightening weapons unlike anything we’ve used so far. And we won’t hesitate to use them some day if the security of the Galaxy is at stake.”

  The Polarian bowed before Fohag in thanks for letting him interrupt and then sat back down.

  The Chief of the base took up where he had left off on the “psychological tests” that a good number of Earthlings had undergone unknowingly.

  “Here now is an article reporting the incursion of our pilots Hogounn and Injya, specialists who have already carried out 15 missions in a T27 country called France. Zimko, the leader of us all, to whom I sent these various translations along with the original texts, assured me that the article you are about to see is very funny. The incursion, such as it is described by the eyewitness, seems very amusing to the natives of T27. Zimko, as you know, lived incognito for a time on this planet so he’s very familiar with their reactions and outmoded customs.17 So, I believe him when he says that in the eyes of the Earthlings this adventure in question is funny. For my part, I don’t get it all. But here’s the translation.”

  The screen lit up slowly and the weird scroll of fluorescent characters appeared in the velvety abyss, a kind of indescribable void but with words.

  A lot of flying saucers in our region:

  “ On Sunday in Chabeuil just like I’m seeing you I saw the pilot of a mysterious machine,” Mme. Leboeuf of Valence confirmed18.

  Chabeuil, September 28, 1954.

  “Don’t think I’m crazy. I’m not off my rocker.”

  Our witness, Mme. Leboeuf of Valence, who asked us for an interview about this “serious affair” and who, by way of introduction, swore to us she was perfectly rational, fiddled with her handbag and gloves in her weak fingers while glancing worriedly from right to left. She opened her mouth, closed it, cleared her throat, swallowed hard and finally, leaning forward, spit this out:

  “I saw the man from the flying saucer like I’m seeing you here.”

  Mme. Leboeuf chattered on, talking about her fear, her personal skepticism before this event, then describing the man and the saucer taking off, etc. Here is her account:

  “It was Sunday afternoon. I had gone to Chabeuil to spend the day with my parents-in-law. After lunch I went to the cemetery to put flowers on the family vault and from there I went to the woods to pick some mushrooms. I’m very familiar with the area. It was around 2:30 pm. The road went along an alfalfa field whose last 10 yards are planted with corn. I was busy picking blackberries when my dog started barking behind me. But I had never heard him bark like that. He was next to the cornfield, standing in front of what I first took for a scarecrow and he was trembling, his fur standing on end as if an electric current was shooting through his body. Do you have to be so stupid, poor dog, I was thinking, to be scared of a scarecrow?

  “I walked over to my dog and that was when I saw the scarecrow moving toward me. It was a man-shaped creature but very small. Must have been around three and half feet tall. It looked to me like a boy stuck in a cellophane bag. I screamed, ran as fast as I could and dove headfirst into the blackberry bush where I stayed down.

  “How long did I stay there? I don’t know. I didn’t see anyone in front of the field but I did see the flying saucer rise up out of the corn. It took off sideways. It was as quiet as a big spinning top, purring, with a soft whistle. It didn’t go too fast. At the end of the field it wobble a little and then vroom… it shot straight up.

  “I tried to stay still in the bush. Three farmers passed by. I wanted to call out to them but I couldn’t utter a sound. They saw me and my face and must have figured that something crazy had happened. So, the first thing they did was to take me to their farm and give me a big glass of rum. I told them the best I could about what I’d seen. They went back to the cornfield with me and we found where the flying saucer had landed.”

  We went to the locale after hearing this astonishing story. The cornfield, which has ten rows, is bordered on one side by an alfalfa field and on the other by a row of acacias. That was where we did indeed find a round space around ten feet in diameter. Seven stalks of corn in the first row were lying flat, the grass separating the corn from the acacias was pressed down, some hawthorn twigs were broken and acacia branches snapped off—toward the top of the trees the branches were stripped of their leaves…

  The last fluorescent characters faded away into the depths of the 3-D screen.

  Fohag, sitting with the Polarian and Centaurian section chiefs, stood up. “The translation that I gave you is one of the clearest and most courageous accounts published about this mission of Hogounn and Injya. Many newspapers purely and simply mocked the Earthling woman and took wicked pleasure in describing her as certainly out of her mind.

  “This proves to us that the majority of T27 inhabitants are not only primitive but also proudly stupid and ignorant. Unable to imagine that beings from another planet could have reached a level of civilization clearly superior to theirs, they fiercely deny their existence and make fun of their brothers who admit, in all honesty, having seen such beings come out of a flying saucer.

  “Wisdom advises us to carry on. A day will come when the pile of testimony will erase all doubt. Then the Earthlings will know for certain that other beings are watching them and they will be totally prepared to accept us without panicking. Their governments, moreover, will be prudent enough to give strict orders to stay calm and peaceful in the face of events that only a few initiated Earthlings are expecting impatiently.”

  A shrill alarm rang out in the huge room with metallic walls. The intrigued audience looked toward the 3-D screen where the face of Boïdno, Chief of the Venus Base, popped up.

  “The entire population of Rynka, the Mars Base, has fallen under the psychic control of the Denebians!” he announced in a shaky voice. “After Venus, Mars. The green monsters seem to be gathering their ‘space guerillas’ in this solar system. Other similar attacks are, therefore, to be feared. We’re making all necessary preparations to counter it… but the Denebians have perfected a ‘scrambler’ that jams our radars and our mechano-psychic field protectors.

  “Zimko is finishing up the final preparations for battle and is ready to send his own commando team to help Rynka. Stay in constant contact and alert all the Fimn’has squadrons on observation flights. All ships should be ready to go back to their base at the first signal. Over and out.”

  CHAPTER VII

  The Space Commando led by Zimko flew through interplanetary space toward Mars. Made up of 50 Fimn’has it had Centaurian and Wolfian ships of 20 and 25 feet in diameter as well as Polarian “flying saucers” twice as big. The combat squad, equipped with disintegrator cannons and tetanizing ray guns, entered Earth’s orbit like lightning.

  After receiving the psychic message explaining the events at Rynka, Zimko had immediately devised a masterful plan of action. One detail had struck him right away: if the Denebians were taking all this trouble to submit the entire population of the Martian base to their control—and without occupying the city�
��this obviously meant that taking over Rynka was not their main goal. It was one step of a much bigger operation.

  Zimko knew that the Denebians and the awful creatures from Procyon had put a price on his head. As Chief of the Space Commandos his elite squadrons had foiled all tricks by these monsters to take over the solar system. He also knew that his enemies used force only as a last resort and this because terribly destructive weapons would come into play, weapons prone to massacre both attackers and attacked alike.

  Zimko was sure that in attacking Rynka the Denebians wished to set a trap for him. Paradoxically, he had also decided to fulfill their wishes.

  “But that’s crazy!” cried Honky, Chief of the Information Service of the Federated Worlds, who had known Zimko for a long time. “Going to Rynka is throwing yourself into the claws of the Denebians who are trying to capture you in any way they can.”

  Zimko winked and smiled mischievously. “Don’t worry, Honky, I’ve got a plan. Let’s look at it. If the Denebians capture me, what are they going to do next?”

  Without giving him time to answer he went on.

  “They’ll be in a hurry to take me far away from the solar system… to make me talk or to plunder my mind. And these monsters know very well that my brain contains secrets of the utmost importance to the future of the civilizations of this galactic zone. If they can find out what we’re preparing, if they can know our plans, it would be very easy for them to anticipate us or to attack our weak points.”

  Honky looked at him, surprised, honestly wondering if his old friend had lost his mind. “Listen, Zimko…”

  The other laughed, “We’re on duty, Honky, don’t forget formalities. Do you really doubt my sanity? No, I’m telling you, I’m perfectly sound in body and mind when I say I’ve decided to go to Rynka and fall into the hands of our old Denebian pals. Don’t worry. Zimko knows what he’s doing and will pull through just fine. Besides, while the damned reptiles are running away with their prize, we can strengthen our bases calmly and set up a real defense barrier around the planets of this system.”