“No!”
Morane froze.
“Forgive me, but should you throw that switch without protective gloves and before I throw this switch...” Pescade indicated a large red button on the low panel before him... “You would receive a massive radiation burn to your hands, possibly fatal. You must remember this place may be a work of genius, but by modern standards... I fear I lacked the genius of my friend and mentor. It has been all I could do merely to maintain the island safely, and not even that...” He turned to Saint-Clair, locking his eyes with the man’s uncanny orbs. “That was why I sent for you.”
“Sent?”
“Indirectly, of course, but the bait was laid, and who else would be chosen for such a mission? No, there’s no time for modesty. I needed a man of your caliber, even knowing that it would also draw other, more ruthless men. I needed to give you this.”
The old man moved toward a closed cabinet which he opened. Inside was a large old book, stuffed with papers and wrapped in oil cloth.
“Doctor Antekirtt’s journals, gentlemen. All his discoveries, all his wisdom. It’s time to let the world be reminded of his genius, and time to carry these secrets away from this place before they’re buried forever.”
“Buried?” Saint-Clair asked.
“Buried,” the Yellow Shadow repeated. He was smiling, his weapon aimed at the Nyctalope’s chest. Behind him was Dr. No and several of his men, two of them closely covering Prince and the Boy. The little dog was nowhere to be seen.
“Don’t tell me that you have failed to understand what this doddering fool was trying to tell you,” Ming gloated. “My God, man, think. A natural nuclear reactor. These great generators... Perhaps you would care to tell them, Doctor?”
The Chinese glided forward like a great snake. He moved toward the switch where Morane had been standing. “No doubt you know the island is a natural nuclear reactor. To some extent, the entire planet is, but what you cannot comprehend is the simple fact that, in tampering with nature, Dr. Antekirtt upset the balance. Are you familiar with the term ‘China Syndrome?’”
Morane had gone white. “Meltdown.”
“Exactly,” Ming said. “Meltdown. The entire island collapsing on its core, a tremendous explosion and a release of radioactive gasses. No doubt, the island will cease to exist. The geologists who monitor such things will put it down to a volcanic eruption, but... Tell me, how long do you estimate?” he had spoken to Point Pescade.
“Should I fail to throw that switch? A few hours. It controls the rods which help to cool the reactor which the volcano powers. They’re failing, but should hold out a little longer...”
“So that you have time to give our friend Saint-Clair here Antekirtt’s notebook?. Such a waste. For the greater glory of France? What a joke. No, no the good Doctor and I have better things to do with this gift.” Ming was gloating.
The Nyctalope was seemingly at ease, but beneath the exterior, every muscle was tense. He could feel the tension build, and knew that his moment, the moment of action, was near. From the corner of his eye, he had seen the Boy’s little dog in the shadows. He might be small, but could provide a diversion, and all Saint-Clair needed was one moment. If only the animal waited for the right moment.
Dr. No was standing by the switch now. “So this decides all our fates? Throw the switch and the island lives for another few hours, leave it and...” He smiled thinly and reached out for the switch.
Let the old man keep silent, Saint-Clair thought.
Dr. No put both hands on the switch.
Point Pescade moved a single step, hiding the red button with his body.
Dr. No threw the switch.
Then, everything happened at once.
The Chinese-German scientist was jolted; his body became an arc of light and fire, his hands almost ablaze. An inhuman scream escaped his lips. For a moment, he hung there before his body broke contact. Then, still screaming, he ran from the room, holding his burning hands in front of him.
The little dog leaped forward and sank his teeth into the ankle of the guard behind the Boy.
Bernard Prince ducked and drove his elbow back into the breast bone of the man guarding him. The fellow folded like cardboard as the Interpol agent’s hand chopped down on his exposed neck.
The Nyctalope drew one of his Brownings and calmly shot the guard who was screaming at the little dog between the eyes.
Bob Morane leaped and knocked aside Monsieur Ming’s gun as it fired. There was a momentous struggle, then the bigger man forced Morane off. Moving faster than he would seem capable of, the Yellow Shadow was off through the catacombs, following Dr. No. The Nyctalope lunged to follow him.
“Saint-Clair!”
It was Prince. He was pointing at the control panel.
Point Pescade was slumped against it. A red stain ran down the front of his shirt. Saint-Clair recognized the dark color of heart’s blood.
He and Morane kneeled by the fallen figure. While the aviator checked the wound, Saint-Clair cradled the old man’s head.
“Take it easy. We’ll get you to help... Prince, press this red button and throw that switch...”
“No,” Point Pescade said, his voice curiously strong. “No. It’s better this way. Don’t bother, son, I know a fatal wound when I... Promise me that you will get the Doctor’s papers away. You must decide what to do with them. I’m too close. That’s why I chose you. Please, promise me you will...”
But that was the last thing he said—in this world.
Ming and his men gave them no more trouble. With the island’s protection cut off, they made quick work of returning to their boat, and much to Saint-Clair’s surprise, when they reached the Cormorant, the Captain was halfway sober and the engines warm. They were underway in a matter of minutes.
The first pink tint of dawn was teasing the horizon in the east when, to their south, the Sun rose with a vengeance. There was a flash of light so bright that, for an instant, they could see through the flesh of their hands to the very bone, and then the sky was filled with fire and rubble as the island disintegrated as if it had never existed.
At Saint-Clair’s command, they grabbed the gunwale. In the next moments, a roar like the Heavens themselves had opened hit them, and then a wind, hot as the Devil’s breath, sent the boat rocking and the waves rolling under them.
It would be a near thing, the Captain had told them, but they could outrun the worst of the tsunami that would follow the island’s destruction.
The Boy and the Dog went below first. It had been a long day. Prince went next, a single finger raised in salute as he did. Morane lingered for a moment. The diary of Doctor Antekirtt lay on the engine housing. He looked at it for a long time, then at Saint-Clair.
“Coming below?”
“In a minute.” Saint-Clair watched as Morane went below.
The island, at least the place where it had been, was dark once more. In the east, the Sun was now a promise rather than a hope.
He lifted Antekirtt’s notebook. In this journal were answers that men had sought for centuries. And it would soon be in the hands of his own beloved France, perhaps heralding the dawn of a new century of French power and greatness…
But at what price?
Slowly and with deliberation, he tore the pages from the notebook. He tossed them to the seven winds and watched as they fell to the surface of the still roiling sea.
And when he was done, he went below. For the first time in a long time, he felt human, he felt part of something. There was such a thing as redemption, even for men who could not die in the ordinary way of mortals.
For the Nyctalope, the dawn had come again after too long a darkness.
In his novel Belzebuth, the eponymous villain captures the Nyctalope’s wife, Sylvie, and their son, Little Pierre, and using a technique of suspended animation, takes them to the year 2100. Leo, Gno Mitang, and his two assistants follow, also using suspended animation. La Hire then chronicles Leo’s battle against Belzebuth in
the future, but ends the book by having Leo waking up in bed, as if the entire story had been nothing but a dream. This explanation fails to account for the fact that Sylvie, Gno, etc., all shared the same dream! More likely, it is as if some unknown time traveling entity rescued the Nyctalope and his family and tampered with their memories. In this story, Emmanuel Gorlier finally resolves that puzzle.
Emmanuel Gorlier: Out of Time
July 15, 2103. 10:30 p.m.
Leo Saint-Clair stood before the great glass window that occupied a section of his office aboard his sail boat Stella, presently cruising off the coasts of Douardenez in Brittany, watching the storm unleashing its fury over the Atlantic. The night was pitch black, except for the powerful swathes of lightning that occasionally burst from the sky like angry bolts thrown by the old gods of this ancient Celtic land. To most people, the darkness outside would have been impenetrable. But to the Nyctalope, it was clear as daylight, and he could see each gigantic wave pummel his unsinkable floating citadel. The irresistible force of the storm striking his unmovable ship was the perfect analogy for the thoughts that currently occupied his mind: could a single man, even him, withstand the repeated assaults of Fate?
Leo looked grimly at a folder on his dark mahogany desk. Perhaps the answer to his question lay inside? It contained the diary of his arch-foe Hughes Mezarek, a.k.a. “Belzebuth,” the progeny of two of his ancient enemies, the mad scientist Maur Korrides and the vengeful Diana Ivanovna Krasnoview, the Red Princess, better known as Titania, whom he had defeated 176 years ago—although it was only four years ago in his personal timeline.
Leo would never forget that fateful night when he had learned that a man calling himself “Belzebuth” and claiming to be Korrides and Titania’s son had kidnapped, in the name of revenge, his wife Sylvie and his young son Pierre, then used a novel process of hibernation which he had designed to take them to the year 2100. Of course, he had followed the madman, using the same methods, and defeated him. Belzebuth had died a miserable death, shot by one of his own victims, leaving Leo virtual master of this future world. How could it have been otherwise? Wasn’t he the Nyctalope, after all?
But in death, Hugues Mezarek had taken all his secrets with him. How could he, a man in his 30s, whom Leo had never before met, be the child of Korrides and Titania. How could an unknown enemy have dedicated his entire life to the destruction of the Nyctalope?
Leo despaired of ever learning the truth—until Mezarek’s diary had been miraculously found in a hidden safe kept by the arch-villain.
It had, of course, been sent immediately to the Nyctalope for study. And now, it lay on his desk, waiting to reveal the secrets of a man born out of time…
The Diary of Hughes Mezarek
Tonight, May 31, 1928, I am both one-year-old and 35-year-old.
I am not one man, but two!
My plans are complete at last!
Tomorrow, June 1, 1928, I shall embark on an irrevocable course of action that will result in the destruction of Leo Saint-Clair, the Nyctalope, the man responsible for the deaths of my dear parents.
I shall use this diary to chronicle the tale of my revenge. I dedicate it to the great Maur Korrides, my father, and the beautiful Diana, my mother, to show that nothing can withstand the will of a truly superior man—not even the hated Nyctalope!
Because of him, I never knew the love of my mother and the wise guidance of my father. I was denied the tender comforts of a true family when they both perished in an ignominious Spanish jail a year ago, soon after the birth of my younger self.
I was raised instead by their followers, who had dedicated their lives to fight the King of Spain. My education was entrusted to my uncle, Prosper Korrides. He had lost the use of his legs a few years prior, in the crash of a spaceship of his own design with which he had explored our Solar System. Thanks to his science, I quickly mastered the arcane arts of physics, biology and chemistry. My uncle had developed various processes to help Men adapt to extraterrestrial environments. I became the beneficiary of some of these, which increased considerably my physical strength and mental prowess. When I was 10, I was told I already looked like a 15-year-old…
My parents’ followers eventually succeeded in bringing down the Spanish Monarchy in 1931 when King Alfonso XIII fled Spain to find refuse in Rome. But, unfortunately, they failed to grab power and build the scientific dictatorship of which my father had dreamed. Instead, a bloody civil war broke out.
I shall never forget the night of January 1939 when General Franco’s troops burst into our last refuge and massacred all our men. A commando of the sinister Condor Legion, comprised of “volunteers” from the German Lutwaffe, burst into our underground quarters where my uncle and I had been hiding, hoping to escape our enemies. The commando was headed by a German scientist named Zemo who had heard of my uncle’s scientific discoveries and had been dispatched especially by their Führer to capture him and put his talents to the service of the Third Reich.
Colonel Zemo was delighted to find not one genius—but two! My uncle and I, now the sole survivors of Titania’s men, were quickly packed into a plane and flown to Germany. There, I was separated from my uncle, and assigned to work at Castle Zemo in Bavaria, creating an array of super-weapons meant to ensure the Reich’s ultimate victory.
I was all too happy to collaborate with Zemo—a brilliant scientist himself—knowing that the labors of my genius would be used to bring down Saint-Clair’s beloved France, and perhaps the Nyctalope himself! How dearly I wanted to take a more active part in my hated enemy’s downfall! How often I begged Zemo to release me! But the Nazi never trusted me. After the horrible accident that condemned him to have a hideous hood permanently attached to his face, Zemo trusted no one. That grim fate had tipped him over the edge and he, like his masters in Berlin, began to succumb to total madness. I clearly understood then that the Reich was doomed to fail.
Wishing to escape the Götterdämmerung that that ranting madman Hitler had in mind, I secretly plotted my escape. In April 1945, as Zemo vanished in the fog of the war, I managed at last to flee from his castle. Using my status as his prisoner, and posing as a German resistant from the virtually extinct White Rose movement, I managed to cross the invading Allied lines and, eventually, reach France.
But fate had managed to thwart my most cherished ambition: it turned out that, blinded by his patriotic fervor, the Nyctalope had collaborated with the Vichy regime! Just as I had finished settling comfortably in new surroundings, under the new identity of “Hughes Mezarek”, I found that Saint-Clair had been discreetly asked by the French authorities to leave the country and had relocated in ignominious exile in Argentina! Was I to be deprived of my revenge?
No! For a most ingenious plan then formed in my mind. Where Zemo and his Nazi cohorts had failed, I, Hughes Mezarek would triumph! I would become the Master of the World—and still destroy my Great Enemy in the process!
During the War, the Nazis had been very thorough in collecting all scientific papers published by allied scientists. That is how I had come across an article published in 1939 in the Revue de Mathématiques by one Noël Essaillon, a crippled French scientist who claimed to understand the mechanics of time travel. There were a few errors in the paper, but they could be easily fixed, and I had filed it away in my eidetic memory for future use.
The time had now come to put Essaillon’s discovery to good use! I immediately tracked down the reclusive scientist who lived alone with his daughter. I found that Essaillon had perfected his process, with the help of a fellow mathematician, Pierre Saint-Menoux, who had since disappeared.
It was child’s play for me to gain Essaillon’s trust and, offering to go looking for Saint-Menoux, I used my considerable financial resources to help the old scientist, who was by then on the verge of financial ruin, manufacture a second “timesuit.”
Fully dressed in the green “Noëlite” suit, I, Hugues Mezarek, became a full-fledged time traveler on June 1, 1948! I was then 21, althou
gh anyone looking at me would have deemed me to be in my mid-30s.
I had, of course, lied to Essaillon. I had no intention of looking for the careless Saint-Menoux. My ambitions lay elsewhere!
I should, however, have been more careful in heeding the old scientist’s advice, for like my predecessor, I, too, almost became a casualty of time travel. Instead of rematerializing at the safehouse I had planned to use, I rematerialized at Neuve Chapelle near the Belgium border. It was October 28, 1914, and the German Army had dumped 3000 shells of poison gas upon the French and British trenches.
My Noëlite suit proved to be my salvation, as it protected me from the deadly gases, but, in the process, became irrevocably ruined. As the complex compounds used to manufacture Noëlite could not be made until at least the late 1930s, the pathways of time were forever closed to me!
But if I had just suffered a serious blow, my plans were nevertheless still intact. I was in the era that I had chosen. I had work to do! In the chaotic turmoil of the Great War, I easily found a way to travel to the United States where Hughes Mezarek, a refugee from the bloodiest conflict in all human history, quickly managed to acquire doctorates in medicine, physics and chemistry.
After the War, I became a famous professor at the universities of Boston and Leipzig.
From a distance, I kept an eye on my dear parents. My father, Maur Korrides, had just returned from Mars, after the death of his wife, Marguerite, at the hands of the Martians. My mother, Diana Ivanovna Krasnoview, was now becoming famously known in the West as the “Red Princess.”
My frustration was immense, for I knew from Saint-Menoux’s journals that to interfere in their lives might have caused me to never have been born! So I remained a powerless observer from afar, condemned to a worse torture that even Dante could have imagined: to watch my parents die again as a result of the ignoble intervention of the Nyctalope!
The Nyctalope Steps In Page 30
