by Jimmy Guieu
The Denebian with its herculean strength snatched up each man with one arm and carried them easily inside the spaceship. In their fall during the sudden acceleration the two Earthlings had passed out. The rectangular hatch closed slowly behind the captives and the flying saucer rose into the sky at fantastic speed.
Struck with terror by the Machiavellian kidnapping the Rocketeers jumped into their vehicles and raced at 60 miles an hour to Woomera City to alert the authorities.
“It’s done,” Zimko concluded. “Now we have to go back to the Denebian saucer-base. Then we’ll come up with a plan to release Morrison, Howard, Kinsington and the other scientists that the monsters captured pretty much everywhere on this planet.”
At the commands of the spaceship Yuln headed for Wyola Lake. The ship arrived just as the Denebians were slowly descending to the giant base, apparently covered again with sand and perfectly camouflaged in the desert dunes. The huge rectangular hatch opened in the round dome. The baby saucer tilted and went down at an angle, wobbling slightly when it slipped into the gaping hold of the mother ship. The hatch closed up, completely hiding the entrance.
For ignorant eyes the Denebian base was nothing but a fat dune of sand with a peculiar form. The wind, however, was sweeping in the sand to assist its weird camouflage.
“Now,” the Polarian decided, “it’s time to act. But I’m afraid that our ‘helping hand’ won’t come off so easily. Therefore, we’re going to have to play it close, very close. We have almost 70 men to save before the green monsters submit them to their psychic treatment.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Polarian and his Earthling friends cooked up a plan of action to free the scientists being held prisoner in the Denebian base. Yuln suddenly gave the alarm: a spaceship was approaching. The fluorescent radar showed a shiny “beep” that was blinking off and on, coming steadily closer in the visual field. Zimko concentrated, casting his powerful paroptic vision into the detected ship.
“It’s a Denebian flying saucer with four occupants. They’re coming back to their base after filming the launch pads of the guided missiles built by the Russians in Peenemunde on the Baltic Sea… These monsters are figuring to go back to Europe to kidnap Russian and German specialists in rocket science.”
While talking, Zimko had given his telepathic orders to his sister. Without the Earthlings realizing it, the flying saucer under Yuln’s command was shooting off to intercept the newcomer. The two discs of almost the same size passed each other over the Gibson Desert, more than 600 miles from Wyola Lake. Yuln read her brother’s mind to maneuver the ship. She turned the ship back, keeping an eye on the screen and the Denebian saucer’s progress. The blond Girl from Space spun a calibrated knob that moved a needle on the command post. From the top of the dome protecting the cockpit a purple ray shot out, tore through space and enveloped the enemy saucer. It stopped instantly, suspended in mid-air.
Keep it there in the gravito-magnetic interceptor, Zimko ordered psychically, and bring us up to the ship.
The spaceship sprang through the air and stopped 50 yards away from the Denebian disc, which was held firm by the strong gravito-magnetic interceptor. With the purple ray flowing out of a bright ball on top of the dome, another ray, pink this time, joined its paralyzing power. Like statues, the four green monsters, confused by the inexplicable freezing of their disc, stood riveted to the spot.
When the Polarian had explained to his companions the nature of these maneuvers, Kariven asked, “But why not just paralyze all the Denebians in the spaceship under the desert sand? It’d be so easy to point this paralyzing ray at the base…”
“No, Kariven. This ray is tuned to Denebian waves. It acts on the nerve centers and paralyzes their movements without stopping the normal functioning of their organs. But it can have disastrous effects on the human organism. We haven’t yet figured out the correct wavelength for humans. By projecting this ray on the Denebian base we would risk killing the human prisoners by blocking their body functions and stopping their hearts and lungs.”
“Then how are we going to free our fellow men?” Jenny’s voice shook, understandably nervous.
Zimko looked like he was thinking deeply. What unsuspected psychic ability was hiding behind this meditative appearance?
“We’re going to land,” he said after this temporary lull. Then he spoke mentally to his sister, Guide the Denebian spaceship to the ground.
The two ships landed gently, 30 feet away from each other.
Yuln left the command post. In her graceful, elegant gait she went up to the metal wall. Her hand skimmed over the luminescent surface and a rectangular panel opened, tilting down horizontally until it was around three feet off the floor. From this unfolded table an extension silently slid out. The young Polarian pressed a series of numbered buttons on the edge of the board. Ten shiny, chrome cylinders emerged from the metal floor, lined up around the long horizontal table.
“I didn’t see a restaurant in the area,” Yuln smirked. “So, I guess we’ll just have to have breakfast ‘at home’.”
At Zimko’s invitation the amazed passengers took their places around this one-of-a-kind table by sitting on the cylinders, which were spongy and very comfortable. Yuln entered another series of numbers on the keyboard before sitting down next to Kariven.
This isn’t very intimate, she told him telepathically, but we owe it to our guests…
“Indeed, my dear…”
The explorer interrupted himself, cursing under his breath at his scatterbrained forgetfulness. Answering aloud and calling Zimko’s sister “my dear”!
Surprised and intrigued, his friends stared at him again. Was he losing his mind? What were all these obscure remarks about?
Kariven mentally heard a kind of guffaw. Ha, ha, ha. That’s a good one!
His confused and reproachful eyes turned to Zimko, who was casually drumming his fingers on the table.
Trying to change the subject Kariven pointed to the two empty cylinders. “Are you expecting more guests?”
“Two,” Zimko was amused at the general astonishment.
All of a sudden he jumped up as if he had heard something. While talking with an invisible other, his face looked excited.
“There they are!” he cried out happily, flipping a switch to open the airlock.
A minute later two Polarians—a man and a young woman—entered the cockpit. The man was wearing short boots, a sky-blue jacket and a dark red bodysuit. The girl with him was a rare beauty, wearing an emerald green, transparent tunic, like Yuln and Jenny. The newcomer threw herself into Zimko’s arms and kissed him passionately, not worrying about the human passengers whom she had greeted with a warm smile on entering.
“This is Tlyka, the co-pilot of my good friend Nylak,” Zimko introduced them.
The Earthlings saluted with their raised right hands. Somewhat surprised by this strange ceremony Doniatchka hesitated before she herself raised her hand, whispering to Dormoy, “What’s this all about, Michel?”
Dormoy took her hand and examined it. “You don’t have it but it doesn’t matter.” He raised the girl’s hand to his lips and kissed it.
“What don’t I have?” she asked, leaving her hand in the fingers that were squeezing it gently. “Am I missing something?”
While the geophysicist whispered with the young Russian, the new arrivals took their place at the table. Yuln worked the keyboard again. From a recess uncovered by the hidden table ten plastic cubes slid out, each containing four tabs like chocolate bars and a sealed pouch with an iridescent liquid. Yuln handed them out to the guests and started in on hers.
“Don’t be fooled by appearance,” she said. “These bars have the nutritional value of a gargantuan meal. The liquid is a bacteriolytic tonic that tastes great. Tear off the upper edges of the pouch and drink it with the plastic straw that’s on the side.”
I’ve thought a lot about you, dear, Zimko murmured telepathically to Tlyka, the young co-pilot.
&n
bsp; I know, my love. Your thoughts have often embraced me when I was far away from you… We were working in Alaska when your call reached us a short time ago. Glancing at Yuln and Kariven, who were munching their bars and speaking volumes with their eyes, she added, Yuln and this Earthling appear to be consciously practicing the laws of universal love appreciated by our race.
From the first time they saw each other, Zimko admitted with a tender smile, looking at his sister. These young lovebirds—especially Kariven—sometimes forget that telepathy is second nature to us.
Professor Yegov, who had swallowed his bars in no time at all, was sucking the colorful liquid in the clear pouch. He looked around at his neighbors, thought for a minute, then laughed and confessed, “Men really ought to get to know each other better. By the most extraordinary adventures here we are together, my fellow Russian and I with Frenchmen and four charming beings from another planet. And I feel great. I’m even convinced that among English or Americans we’d still be able to eat a friendly breakfast!
“You were right, Zimko. Earthlings are stupid pigs who only hurt one another or bicker like spoiled children. We really need to get to know each other, to tear down borders and make a clean slate of our ridiculous prejudices. That’s the solution to the problem of world peace: men of goodwill coming together unconditionally.
“I am glad, Zimko,” he concluded without hiding his emotions, “that you and your friends kidnapped me. I will follow your orders and do all I can to support your humanitarian principles.”
“We don’t give orders to friends, Professor Yegov,” the Polarian emphasized. “Earthlings are our friends even though they don’t know it. And if, unfortunately, some of them make pacts with the Denebians, they are bad humans, traitors to their own race. Whoever oppresses their brothers are our enemies. We hate to have to fight them like Denebians, but it can’t be helped.”
To Kariven he added, “You have an expression, I believe, about ‘infected sheep’?”
“Black sheep,” the anthropologist corrected.
“Yes, they’re ‘black sheep’ when they scorn humanitarian laws and we have to defeat them to protect the ones they persecute.”
Changing the subject Zimko asked Nylak, “What’s new, Nylak, in your zone of operation?”
“Tlyka and I had to intervene two hours ago to stop an attempted sabotage in Canada. We were headed back to Alaska after observing the American base in Thule, Greenland, when we saw two Denebian ships over Shirley Bay. The wretches were spying on the Canadian observatory of Project Magnet40 and getting ready to launch transmutation rays at the buildings. All the specialized machines in the huge laboratory would have been destroyed and the work halted for months on end. We had to disintegrate the two enemy discs.”
Tlyka smiled, “The Canadian experts in charge of detecting flying saucers are going to be pretty surprised to see three of these UFOs on the record. And I wonder how they’ll explain the sudden disappearance of the two saucers we disintegrated. We’ll go back there someday to probe the brains of the scientists and read what thoughts our brief little battle caused.”
“Basically you prevented the destruction of an observation post destined to spot your own flying saucers. That’s pretty surprising, although I understand your desire to protect the technical advances of humanity.”
“In reality, Kariven, it’s very simple,” the young woman answered familiarly while chatting telepathically of more intimate things with Zimko. “We’re not interested in seeing observatories searching for our ships get destroyed for the simple reason that it doesn’t do them any good to detect us. They would have to be able to come and catch us and this the Earthlings cannot do.
“Furthermore, since 1952 the American, British and Russian military staffs have known that flying saucers are not hallucinations or weather balloons—simplistic explanations that are only satisfactory to thickheaded men. The Governmental Investigation Commissions and especially Project Blue Book41 know perfectly well that flying saucers come from another planet and that they can’t catch one. But that’s all they know. The day will come when we Polarians will make contact with the governmental authorities but for now we prefer to deal with just a few, trustworthy Earthlings who want to see peace finally reign on Earth. I’m talking about the growing number of Earthlings who bear the Mark of the New Race.”
My dear, she said to Zimko in the meantime, I can’t wait for there to be calm again in this corner of the Universe so we can finally be together. We don’t even see each other once a week on this planet. I often think of our wonderful time on Mars at our permanent base there before the Denebians came into this solar system.
I think of that too, dear Tlyka, but we have to respect the orders of the Galactic Council. On a mission on a planet being threatened with war Polarians bound by an extra-familial emotional tie—the Earthlings call this Love—can’t work together and will be assigned to different spaceships. They don’t forbid us to see each other or cooperate on missions if necessary…
But they can’t live together on the threatened planet, she finished for Zimko, watching him tenderly.
I asked the Council to grant us one earth-day break after this mission we need to accomplish.
Tlyka eyes sparkled with joy. Let’s not lose a second, dear. Tell us your plan.
“My friends,” the Polarian said out loud, “here’s how I decided we should free the captive scientists.”
Barely 30 feet separated the Zimko’s spaceship from the Polarian ship that had just come to join him in Australia. The Denebian flying saucer frozen by the gravito-magnetic rays sat on a sand dune 100 feet farther away. Tlyka and Yuln, along with Jenny, Doniatchka and Professor Yegov stayed in their respective ships.
Zimko, Nylak and the three explorers walked over to the intercepted ship. Zimko stood before it and sent out an order to one of the paralyzed Denebians inside. Presently a hatch was opened by the unconscious green monster. The five men entered the spaceship and examined it meticulously. Its four occupants had not escaped the rays. Three were paralyzed at their posts and the fourth was now in the airlock, guarding the closed hatch on Zimko’s orders.
“Everything’s ready to go. We can take off.”
Zimko sent an order to the Denebian pilot under his control and the flying saucer rose up, closely followed by the two ships piloted by Yuln and Tlyka. For this dangerous mission they both remained protected by their invisibility shields. A few minutes later the three discs flying in single file veered down toward the giant saucer camouflaged in the desert sand. By remote control from the reptilian pilot the rectangular panel opened below the dome to receive the expected ship—and the unexpected passengers—so it could park in the vast space inside.
The Polarian fitted around his waist a huge bluish belt with a kind of flat metal box instead of a buckle, with different colored knobs. He gave the explorers the other belts that were provided by his fellow Polarian.
The Earthlings were fairly surprised when they put on their belts, thinking that they were going to “guide” the Denebians by the Polarian’s willpower when they got inside the enemy base.
“This box you’re wearing around your waist,” Zimko explained to them, “is an electronic Multiplex. It’s both a weapon and a means of protection with various effects. Six knobs control its six different functions. Give the bright red knob a half turn.”
Which he did himself.
“Now we’re undetectable. A neutralizing barrier is protecting us and keeping our body waves from being detected by the enemy.”
They left the ship that had snuck them into the base and stepped out under a huge metal vault over 250 feet high. The shiny dome contained 50 reconnaissance saucers lined up in rows of ten.
Now we’re in the lion’s den, the Man from Outer Space used his sixth sense to avoid the easily detectable sound waves. You have to follow my orders to the letter. Your lives depend on it.
He probed Yuln and Tlyka in their cockpits and gave them orders before bringing
the Denebians out of their spaceship. The two Polarian spaceships, invisible in the garage, were parked as close as possible to the airlock, an empty corridor 60 feet long, 30 high and 60 wide.
The four Denebians left their ship with the Earthling/Polarian commando team still inside and marched like robots toward the big rectangular doorway. Zimko watched them through a window. A few feet from the door they looked like they suddenly became normal and they stepped lively through the opening.
“It looks like they’re no longer under hypnosis.”
“Don’t kid yourself, Kariven. They look normal and can act normal but at the right time they’ll do something completely against their will. The motive thought for this act is already implanted in their brain’s neural circuit. Now listen…”
A kind of deep hooting echoed endlessly off the silvery, super-metal walls of the giant base.
“What’s that?” Dormoy asked.
“One of the Denebians that we let go, the officer of the Space Commandos, just gave the signal for a general assembly. Out of the 500 Denebians making up the detachment on this mobile base, around 480 of them will meet in the central command post. The 20 others will remain at their posts on the second to last floor that houses the energy station and the vital systems. For almost an hour our Denebian will inform his many colleagues about the sensational finds that he thinks he discovered. And I can assure you that his speech will be very exciting!”
It took Zimko ten minutes to visit the whole base thanks to his panoptic vision.
“Come on. Everyone’s busy now, some listening to the officer’s nonsense and the others keeping an eye on the ship’s systems. That’s who were going to visit first. The scientists are being held prisoner in the holds but are only being guarded by two monsters.”
The five men armed with disintegrator cones went down the endless, twisting, turning corridors in the fantastic space structure lit by wall plates giving off a green electro-luminescence. The eerie light made them look like corpses, pale as a band of ghosts.
