My thirst for revenge on the accursed Saint-Clair only grew more intense. He had robbed me of my family; I would take his!
My tool would be a revolutionary hibernation technique developed by Zemo to allow the Nazi leaders to survive the war and someday return to crush their enemies.
My plan is simple: tomorrow, I am going to steal Saint-Clair’s wife and child. Together, we will “travel” to the 22nd century in the three impregnable hibernation capsules that I have built. There, I shall easily become Master of the World, enslaving Saint-Clair’s kin, bending them to my will, knowing that in the past, my powerless enemy will be doomed to age and die, deprived forever of his loved ones!
A slow agony! A long life of pain and endless suffering—just as he visited upon me! I can envision no better revenge!
July 2103.
Leo slammed the diary shut.
He had, in fact, managed to follow Mezarek to the 22nd century, using an alternate hibernation technology; there, he had quickly crushed the villain and been reunited with Sylvie and their son, little Pierre. Contrary to Belzebuth’s mad hopes, it was now the Nyctalope who was Master of this world…A world in which they expected to spend the rest of their lives…
It wasn’t Mezarek’s insane schemes which disturbed Leo and kept him awake, looking at the storm outside, but what the madman had written about him, in that “other life” that had been his—might yet be his?—in 1928.
Could it be true that noble Germany had again fallen victim to the madness of war? Worse yet, that it had surrendered its greatness into the clutches of a lunatic Antichrist named Adolf Hitler? That the same Antichrist, whom Leo thought he had once defeated in the person of the arch-fiend Leonid Zattan, had subjugated, utterly humiliated Eternal France? And, worse of all, that he, Leo Saint-Clair, had… collaborated… with such evil? And been forced into exile?
No! That was unthinkable!
And yet, there was Mezarek’s diary, casually referring to a sequence of events that was a living abomination to him!
Such a thing could not be! Never!
October 10, 2103. 10:30 p.m.
Chief Scientist Oxus—a descendent of the once-leader of the XV—rose as Leo entered the Great Hall of Science which occupied the space where the city of Puteaux had once stood.
“I take it you have good news for me?” said the Nyctalope in a French which sounded oddly accented to his contemporaries, just as that of a man of the 18th century would have been to him.
“Yes, Great Nyctalope,” replied Oxus. “Thanks to Mezarek’s diary, we were able to duplicate the substance he called ‘Noëlite.’ The mathematics were child’s play to our supercomputers. Time travel is now achievable.”
“Has anyone tried it?” said Leo.
“No, no one. I knew your desire to be the first.”
“Very well. I’m ready.”
“Follow me!”
November 7, 1923. 10:10 p.m. Munich.
Leo had been in Munich for two days, enough time to do a thorough recon and select the best possible spot for the job. Now, he sat at the window of this empty house in complete darkness—which was like daylight to him—Mauser in hand—no anachronisms left behind!—waiting for the little man with the funny mustache to come out of the beer hall.
The next day, the same little man—the Antichrist!—inspired by Mussolini’s March on Rome, was planning a putsch at the notorious Bürgerbräukeller beer hall, the first move in a surprising ascent which, in the space of 10 years, according to the history books of the future, would see him rule Germany, crush France, and ally with the accursed Bolsheviks who destroyed Leo’s father!
Leo adjusted his sight. He was ready. The man would die. Here and now!
The beer hall opened. The little man came out, surrounded by some of his associates, Alfred Rosenberg, Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess, and few others Leo doesn’t recognize.
His finger softly squeezed the trigger…
“I’ve got him,” said Bob Morane, putting the needle gun back into its holster. “He’s completely paralyzed.”
“It’s pitch dark in here,” said Manse Everard. “Only another nyctalope like yourself could have made that shot!”
“I still don’t like it,” said Bob. “To save Hitler’s life… You don’t think he might have had the right idea?”
“The Time Patrol’s job is to preserve history, Bob, not to rewrite it. Besides, Colonel Graigh showed you the alternate timelines. Without World War II, it’s either the Nuclear Wars of the 1970s or the Eugenic Wars of the 1990s—not an improvement!”
“I guess you’re right… What will become of the Nyctalope?”
“We’ll pick up him and his family,” said Everard, “erase their memories and put them back in 1928, before he traveled to the future. This entire adventure will be like a dream to him…”
June 19, 1928. 11 p.m. Chateau de Blingy.
Leo Saint-Clair woke up suddenly, and sat up in bed. Sylvie was sleeping peacefully beside him.
What an amazing dream, he thought. So… precise, so detailed…
With his extraordinarily keen senses, he listened to the silence of the night, but could not detect anything out of the ordinary.
Shrugging, he fluffed his pillow and went back to sleep.
Timeline
by Emmanuel Gorlier
(translated by Jean-Marc Lofficier)
1337 B.C.: Fiat Lux! During the reign of Pharaoh Akhenaton, a priest of Aton known by the nickname of “Eyes of Aton” receives the power to see through darkness to defend good and justice from the God. This power will reappear in his descendents when these values are threatened.
May 1337 B.C.: The Three Sisters. The “Eyes of Aton” prevents the assassination of Pharaoh Akhenaton, plotted by the sorceress Hecate using an extraterrestrial gem nicknamed the Egg of Set. The gem emits an all-destroying ray of energy when placed in conjunction with its sister gem located on the Moon. Following these events, the deadly gem is entrusted to his safekeeping. It will be passed on from father to son throughout the ages.
December 1639: Fiat Lux! Henri-Jean de Sainte-Claire, a lieutenant in the guards of Cardinal de Richelieu, a distant descendant of the “Eyes of Aton,” is injured by Cyrano de Bergerac in a duel and, as a result, suddenly acquires the ancestral power of nyctalopia.
December 1641: Fiat Lux! While investigating the conspiracy of Cinq-Mars, Henri-Jean discovers that it is secretly masterminded by alien Invaders who have the power to mimic human form. Henri-Jean thwarts their first attempt, but is distracted by a pretty girl.
September-October 1642: The Three Sisters. Henri-Jean discovers that his would-be girl-friend is one of the alien Invaders sent to distract him from his investigation. He pursues her and her accomplices, and destroys their flying saucer using the Egg of Set. He is then shocked by its raw power and decides it is too dangerous to ever be employed again.
1657: The Three Sisters. Using one of Cyrano’s inventions, Henri-Jean travels to the Moon in order to neutralize the power of the Egg of Set by moving its sister gem to another location on the lunar surface.
1834: Birth of the Nyctalope’s grandfather in Banyuls-sur-Mer, in the Roussillon region of Southern France.
1852: Birth of Princess Alouh T’Hô, daughter of a Hindu prince and Chinese Empress Tseu-Hi, in Nanking, China.
1855: Birth of Jean-Pierre Saint-Clair, the Nyctalope’s father, in Collioures, France. Jean Pierre is raised by his mother while his father manages a farm.
1862: Passions Ardentes. The Nyctalope’s grandfather joins the notorious Catalan smuggler Salbadou in an expedition to Morocco to free a young girl prisoner of a desert tribe.
1877: Birth of Maur Korrides.
7 May 1877: Birth of Léon Saint-Clair, the Nyctalope, in Banyuls-sur-Mer. (The name of his mother was never mentioned by Jean de La Hire.)
28 January 1878: Birth of Comte Adolphe Célestin d’Espie de La Hire, the Nyctalope’s biographer, in Banyuls-sur-Mer.
1877-1888: The Nyct
alope spends his childhood at his grandfather’s house. His father, a sailor in the French Navy, is often away from home. Circa 1882, the Saint-Clairs move to Bourg-la-Reine, near Paris, to live near Leo’s mother’s family.
February-May 1885: L’Homme qui peut vivre dans l’eau. Jean Pierre Saint-Clair is now an Ensign in the French Navy and second-in-command to Louis de Ciserat aboard the Cyclone. Meanwhile, scientist Oxus and his brother-in-law, the mad monk Fulbert, plot to use the powers of the “Hictaner,” a water-breathing man which they created through surgery and radium rays, to become masters of the world. They are defeated when the Hictaner and his father, Charles Severac, turn against them, with the help of Ciserat and Saint-Clair. Oxus and Fulbert disappear. The Hictaner marries Moisette, Oxus’ daughter, and together they retire to Tahiti to live in peace.
1886: The Hictaner and Moisette have a daughter, Christiane.
Birth of Glo Von Warteck at Hollow Rock in the Bermudas.
1888-1891: Leo studies at a high school near Paris. There, he meets Gaëtan de Mirbonne, whose path he will cross again during his military service and in 1913, when Gaëtan is French Consul in Naples, Italy.
1892: Death of Leo’s grandfather.
1892-1894: Leo spends a few years in Russia where his father has been sent as part of a diplomatic mission.
1894: Birth of Diana Ivanovna Kaline in Russia.
1895-1897: Leo goes to university; he earns a masters in sciences; he is also captain of the Bourg la Reine rugby team, where he plays with his childhood friends Robert Champeau, Jean Degains and René Croqui (his future companions in a tragic 1898 adventure).
1895: The Season of the Shark. In Tahiti, the Hictaner is slowly mutating into a shark-like creature. He discovers that Fulbert has allied himself with the Dagon worshippers of Tobias Marsh and is intent on creating an army of “Deep Ones” to take over the world. The two villains clash and Marsh releases Dagon. The Hictaner sacrifices himself to save Tahiti, but he and his wife Moisette die in the cataclysm (which will be blamed on a tropical storm). Their daughter, Christiane, is adopted by the Saint-Clair family.
Early 1898: Death of Leo’s maternal grandmother.
March 1898: L’Assassinat du Nyctalope (tr. as Enter the Nyctalope). The spy Sadi Khan attacks Jean-Pierre Saint-Clair to steal his Radiant Z invention and gravely wounds him. Leo and his three friends pursue him to Geneva. Leo is wounded in the head and acquires his powers of nyctalopia. He then infiltrates the terrorist cell of Dr. Serge Ivanof, but is exposed by the beautiful Katia Garcheff. He is tortured to death and dies on March 21. He is resuscitated by Dr. Adrien de Villiers-Pagan who transplants an artificial heart into him. The terrorists are exposed and defeated, but Sadi Khan manages to escape; Katia commits suicide.
The Three Sisters. It is later revealed that Sadi Khan also stole the Egg of Set which was in the possession of Jean Pierre Saint-Clair.
1898: Attempted Martian invasion of Earth, as described by H.G. Wells in his account, The War of the Worlds.
1898-1901: Leo fulfills his military obligations at the Saint-Cyr Military Academy.
1900: Death of Jean Pierre Saint-Clair, Leo’s father, who never fully recovered from his wounds.
1902: Engineer Korrides succeeds in synthesizing “Heliose” but overwork leads to a nervous breakdown and his wife has him temporarily committed.
1902-07: At some point, Korrides’ first wife passes away while he is still in the hospital.
1902: Glô von Warteck is a student at the Paris University; thanks to a secret inscription in the gardens of the Cluny Museum, he manages to find the long-lost secrets of alchemist Nicholas Flamel hidden in a Benedictine Abbey in Saône et Loire.
1902-1905: First trip of Leo to Tibet, where he meets ancient lamas who teach him some of their occult knowledge.
1902-1912: Glô von Warteck travels around the world, discovering more occult secrets: he visits the Synagogue of Amsterdam, the Synod of Dordrecht, the libraries of Saint Mark in Venice and the Vatican in Rome, the Mosque of Saint Sophia in Constantinople, and learns from the Copts of Egypt, the Maronites of Lebanon, the Monks of Mount Carmel, ands various wise men in Arabia, Isfahan, Kandahar, Delhi, Agra and, finally, the Brahmins of Benares.
1906: Leo is in India with Pilou where he continues his education in the esoteric arts.
1907: Le Trésor dans l’Abîme. Korrides is released from the hospital to help build a revolutionary, heliose-powered submarine in order to recover a treasure from a sunken ship. Unfortunately, heliose interacts with gold in a catastrophic fashion and the treasure is destroyed. Korrides manages to escape and marries a member of the salvage crew, Marguerite Dormach.
La Captive du Démon. Mathias Lumen purchases his estate in the island of Ouessant off the coast of Brittany.
1907-1908: At some point, Leo spends at least four months in China.
1907-1914: The Korrides, presumed dead, live in obscurity in America under the name of Mr. & Mrs. James Norton.
1909-August 1910: Leo explores Central Africa, assisted by Corsat and Pilou. He triumphs several times over a rival explorer named Koynos, who will later become one of the XV.
September 1910-March 1911: Le Mystère des XV (tr. as The Nyctalope on Mars). Leo pursues the kidnappers of his fiancée, Xavière de Ciserat, captured with 14 other girls, including Christiane, the Hictaner’s daughter. He discovers the culprits: a mysterious organization dubbed the XV, led by Oxus. They have built a base on Mars and are seeking ideal wives in order to create a perfect society. The XV are at war with the Martians who attacked Earth earlier, and plan to eventually conquer it.
Leo invades the XV’s base in Congo and manages to reach Mars, although Xavière’s father is killed during the journey. Thanks to the help of his rival Koynos, whom Xavière has seduced, and who is later executed, the Nyctalope succeeds in taking Oxus prisoner and becomes the XV’s new leader. He then leads a French commando which has arrived on Mars to attack the Martians. Thanks to Camille Flammarion, Leo learns to communicate with the aliens and strikes an alliance with some and defeats the others. Having secured a beachhead on Mars, Leo marries Xavière.
October 1911: On Mars, Leo and Xavière have twins.
1912: In Schwarzrock in Germany, Glô von Warteck begins work on the teledyname.
June 1912: Leo spends some time in Turkey.
July 1912: Back on Mars, Xavière gives birth to a third child: Pierre, but dies in childbirth. Pierre is sent to Earth to be with his father; the twins stay on Mars to be raised by Christiane and her husband.
Fall 1912: Le Corsaire Sous-marin. The Black Corsair steals a revolutionary submarine from the French Navy and uses it to attack the United States and Venezuela, seeking revenge for harm done to his family by those two countries. Leo joins the forces fighting him and manages to acquire the secret scientific “testament” of Engineer Korrides for France.
Then, Leo first encounters the German agent Wanda Steilman, who has been encouraging local tribes to rebel against the French, and becomes his lover. She is captured and sentenced to die, but manages to escape.
At the end of the year, Leo publishes his book, Exploration du Tibet Perdu, which will be translated into several languages and bring him a steady income.
June-July 1913: La Croisière du Nyctalope. Leo and Wanda Steilman meet again during a cruise on the Mediterranean. Leo then thwarts Wanda’s schemes aiming to steal the fortune of Russian Princess Irena Zahidof. Leo pursues Wanda to the Caucasus, where she is killed by her own men. Leo considers marrying Irena, but she dies too, probably poisoned by the Russian secret police, the Okrana.
September 1913-February 1914: Leo, Pilou and Corsat travel in across the Pacific. In Viet-Nam, Leo meets Doctor Yeslun.
1914: Korrides and his wife leave Earth and travel to Mars on a heliose-powered spaceship.
August 1914-November 1918: First World War.
August 1914-June 1917: The Nyctalope takes part in the battles of Champagne, Verdun and Ypres. He earns the rank of “C
ommandant.” He meets Captain d’Harmont (see La Croix de Sang, 1925) and the soldiers Vitto and Soca, who will later become his assistants (see 1924).
October 1914: Hugues Korrides arrives from 1948 in a time suit, which is irremediably destroyed by the War. Forced to stay in that time period, he takes the name of Hugues Mezarek.
February 1916: The Lesson of Captain Danrit. The Nyctalope meets Lieutenant-Colonel Driant (a.k.a. Captain Danrit) during a secret mission and exposes a German invasion force hidden behind Dr. Krueger’s invisibility field. Driant will be killed in the ensuing offensive.
July 1917: The Hunters of Mars. Leo returns to Mars seeking new and better weapons against Germany. He helps John Carter defeat an alien Predator plaguing Helium. The Predator’s destruction inadvertently activates an ancient Martian capsule dug up by Oxus.
The Children of Heracles: The Martian capsule awakens an ancient genetic compulsion buried deep within the men who are descended from Martians, causing then to go mad and kill each other. The French colony does not survive. Oxus and everyone else dies; Leo kills his twins and only survives himself because of his artificial heart. Leo then returns to Earth, having buried his all too painful memories deep within his subconscious.
Summer 1917: Korrides returns to Earth alone, without his wife, aged and bitter. It is possible that he, too, was a victim of the destruction of the Martian colony, which would explain his wife’s disappearance and his lingering hatred towards Leo. Korrides ends up selling his services to the Bolsheviks.
The Nyctalope Steps In Page 31
