by Dan Kelly
Three hours later, the Emperor’s orders having been carried out to the letter. They all gather around a large circular conference table and put the finishing touches on the plan. When this is done, everything is checked and double checked to make sure that nothing has been overlooked. When the Emperor is satisfied, he says, “It’s time to go.”
Chapter 11
It’s the evening before the big day. Pulsar has spent the last twelve hours reviewing his role and responsibilities in tomorrow’s gala with the Queen and her security people and familiarizing himself with the area he has been assigned to patrol. The rest of the Pack has done the same and everybody is tired and wants to hit the sack. The Queen is even more exhausted for she had to review everybody’s role and make sure that everyone understood the what, when, where and how regarding each of their responsibilities. The trap has been set with the Queen as the bait. All that can be done now is wait and hope that Emperor Eclipse will take the bait.
Pulsar has called a meeting of the Pack in his room. The bedrooms that have been assigned to all of them are fairly large, but, even so, it is a little cramped when the other eleven kids show up. With all the jostling going on it is hard to get everyone’s attention, but with a loud shrill whistle everyone settles down. Pulsar begins by saying, “I know you are all tired and want to go to bed, so thanks for giving me this chance to talk with you even though you are beat.
“I just want to thank all of you for stepping up to the plate and offering to help the Queen try to bring the Emperor down. Tomorrow is going to be something like an audition for us. This will be the first time we will be working together as a team to defend Proton and the Queen. We must be alert at all times, canvas our assigned areas continuously and thoroughly, stay calm if and when the Emperor makes his move and remember to use our powers only if it is absolutely necessary. It is very important that we stay in constant communication with security, so that they have the latest information if they have to make a quick decision. There’s going to be a lot going on tomorrow. There will be food, music, entertainment, laughing and dancing all over the place, but we must not allow ourselves to be distracted. If we do, the Queen may very well wind up paying the price for our foul up. Ok, that’s all I wanted to say. Let’s go out there tomorrow and make our Queen, our school and ourselves proud. See you all tomorrow bright and early in the reception hall.”
“Wow!”, thinks Gracie Galaxy, “Pulsar’s already beginning to act like a leader.” And then she starts to quietly giggle. The other kids are also impressed with his poise and comments, but the main thing on everyone’s mind right now is sleep.
But at sunup, the Pack leaps out of bed, eager to begin the day’s adventure. After an enormous breakfast, one that only a twelve year old could consume, they immediately head for their assigned territories, anxious for the festivities to begin. It’s a gorgeous day, the suns are shining brightly and there’s not a cloud in the sky, but it is a little bit on the chilly side.
While the Pack is eating, the Queen is meeting with Security Chief Shandul, Director Drummel and Commander Caitlin for an update on the status of the plan to increase security of the planet’s water supply and a final briefing on Project Q. Everything is in order. The water security plan has been implemented and project Q is ready to go. It has been determined that instead of the
Queen walking up the stairs to the dais as she normally does, she will use the door adjacent to the dais to enter the castle near one of the lavatories and immediately proceed to the Royal Theater. The walk to the theater will take approximately five minutes. She will take her place on the stage and then the hologram will be transmitted to the dais, walking through the backdrop curtains to her throne and sitting down. “Well, gentlemen, we’ve done all we can to bring this off. It’s now up to the Emperor to make his move. Carry on.” The Queen leaves the conference room and waits in her office for the celebration to begin.
At around ten o’clock people start to arrive and at noon time the castle grounds are overflowing with the Queen’s loyal and loving subjects. The Queen, all gussied up in her regal finery and surrounded by security so tight an ant would have trouble getting through to her without permission, steps out of the castle and begins to mingle with her subjects. She loves this part of the day more than any other because she thoroughly enjoys talking directly with the people and hearing their thoughts and concerns.
The Power Pack is checking in with the Office of Security every fifteen minutes and, so far, they’ve reported everything normal. Security personnel in silent hovercraft flying 300 feet above the castle grounds and scanning the crowds with powerful close-up cameras, the pictures being transmitted back to the Office of Security, have detected nothing out of the ordinary either. At around two o’clock, the Queen starts making her way back to the dais and everyone becomes even more alert if that’s possible. It’s almost show time. All are now convinced that if the Emperor is here he will go for the Queen sometime during her appearance on the dais.
The crowds gradually move out of the surrounding fields and into the courtyards circling the castle. The dais is located in the largest of the courtyards, the one on the north side. The four courtyards are connected by broad pathways and the people can wander from one to another to check out the entertainment and the medley of aromas emanating from the vast variety of food spread out on tables around the courtyards.
As the fields empty, the Power Pack and security personnel take up positions in and above the courtyards. Everyone is on the lookout for anything out of the ordinary. The Queen finally reaches the castle, enters through the door next to the dais and hastily heads for the Royal Theater and its stage. The exchange of the Queen for the hologram goes without a glitch. To the onlookers, those in the crowd and those viewing the ceremony on sensorscope, everything appears normal. They see the Queen walk onto the dais from behind the curtains and over to her throne. They see her sit down and begin talking with her advisors on the platform and sampling the selection of cuisine set before them.
Sensorscope is a highly sophisticated communication medium that transmits not only images and sound, but also signals that trigger responses from the viewer’s touch and smell synapses.
Pulsar whispers to the Queen through his miniature transceiver, “Aunt Cue, the hologram is so life like that I have to remind myself that it’s not you. Everyone out here is completely fooled. It’s amazing.”
Queen Quasar comes back with, “Let’s hope that the Emperor is also deceived. Now, Pulsar, a word of caution. It will be best if you use your transceiver only for your scheduled call-ins to the Office of Security, to report a suspicious observation or to respond to an emergency. Even though we are using secure channels, the more you use your transceiver the greater the risk is of you being spotted and tipping our hand to the Emperor. I’ll see to it that the rest of the Pack gets the word also.”
“Understood, Aunt Cue.” Breaking the connection, Pulsar begins to roam through the crowd, looking for a sign that the Emperor has arrived.
Chapter 12
So far, everything has gone as planned. Emperor Eclipse and his accomplices were able to stow away on a freighter spacecraft and, upon landing at Cape Constellation, bypass customs and the security checkpoint, switch disguises and hail local ground transportation to take them to Castle Capella. They instructed the driver to let them out when they were about a half mile away, so they could approach the castle separately on foot and be less conspicuous.
The weather is ideal for what they have in mind, sunny yet chilly. The accomplices will enter the courtyards of the castle through different entrances and the Emperor will gain entry via the underground passageways he has selected. They will all start their way in fifteen minutes from now and meet at the designated rendezvous point when able. With the large crowds, it is difficult to estimate how long it will take the accomplices to get through the gateways. There will be lines of varying lengths at all of the entrances.
The accomplices, however, experience n
o prolonged delays and have no problems gaining access to the castle grounds and meeting up with the Emperor twenty five minutes after being waved in by security. The rendezvous point is a large supply room off a corridor that leads to a door opening to the northern courtyard about fifty yards from the Queen’s dais. The Emperor gets into the supply room through a large grate in the floor that covers access to a broad conduit housing massive bundles of wiring, cables and other paraphernalia that deliver many of the services required by the castle. To permit easy maintenance, the conduit’s diameter is wide enough for a man to walk through it without bending over.
After the equipment and miniature transceivers are distributed, they quickly exit the castle and station themselves at the prescribed positions in front of the dais. There is no security in the corridor to worry about since the Queen is outside and the authorities probably feel there is no need for any. Everything is moving along like a well-designed robot. So far, everything is going smoothly.
A few minutes later, as Pulsar is walking through the crowd in front of the dais, his peripheral vision picks up something really strange. A man to his right lets out a cough and covers his mouth. This by itself would not seem strange, but when he sees a man standing near the middle of the dais almost directly in front of him and another standing at the far end of the dais doing the same thing, all almost in perfect synchronization, as if they were all were obeying an order, he knew something was up. He called this in to the Office of Security and motioned to Chester Comet who was behind and to his right to come over. He told Chester what he had just seen and asked him to check them out with his X-ray vision.
Chester strolls by each one of them and checks them out. Of course, he immediately finds the accelerator tubes, needles, miniature spray containers and the miniature transceivers. He casually walks back to where Pulsar is standing, seemingly watching what the Queen is doing, and tells
him what he found. Pulsar notifies the Office of Security and they instruct him and Chester to keep these men in sight until undercover security people arrive and take over the surveillance. As soon as the undercover folks are on the scene, Pulsar and Chester resume their ambling; roaming through the crowd, scanning for anyone else that might be acting strangely.
Emperor Eclipse has no idea that his accomplices have been discovered and Pulsar has no idea that the Emperor is standing so close that they could reach out and touch each other. The Emperor continues to pass himself off as one of the adoring subjects, waiting for the medicine to take effect. When the Queen gets up and leaves the dais, he and his accomplices will move towards the door leading to the lavatory.
After ten minutes go by and the Queen hasn’t moved from her throne, the Emperor and his accomplices start to worry that something has gone awry. As more time elapses, the accomplices get more and more nervous, so much so, that one of them starts to perspire profusely. He takes a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe his brow and out comes the small container of stupor spray along with it. It falls to the ground right on the spray button, jamming it, and the spray takes out a dozen people standing nearby. As people start collapsing, pandemonium ensues. As the screaming crowd heads for the gateways, the undercover security people manage to grab the accomplices before they get lost in the bedlam, but Emperor Eclipse is able to avoid capture and escapes by the same route he took to get into the castle. Once again, he proves to be as slippery as a yuring, those shiny, slimy purple lizards that are impossible to catch and eat everything in sight.
After the crowds have fled and things have settled down, interrogation of the accomplices begins. Needless to say, they are petrified because they know a lifetime in prison awaits them. With the hope of leniency, they tell everything. The Emperor had put together quite a scheme and, but for the use of a hologram, he might have been successful. Even though the trap they laid didn’t get tripped, the Queen was very proud of everyone involved, especially of her precious Power Pack. They all had followed orders to the letter and Pulsar and Chester had demonstrated perfectly what teamwork can accomplish.
An important byproduct of today’s activities is that Pulsar’s exemplary performance is the launching point for what will become a phenomenal reputation for extraordinary vigilance and ability to assimilate and assess information quickly under stress.
The next day the Queen issues a press release, apologizing for the abrupt end to the celebration and stating that it was brought about by an accidental release of stupor spray by a clumsy nurse who was carrying an unauthorized container in his pocket and it fell to the ground when he pulled out his handkerchief. Telling her people what really happened would serve no purpose except to create an atmosphere of deep anxiety.
“Well” thinks the Queen. “I am very disappointed in the way things turned out, but the extent to which the Emperor was willing to go to bring me down makes me even more determined to get him before he gets me.”
Chapter 13
The next day the Power Pack returns to school with instructions from the Queen to keep what has happened hush-hush. The routine at Stellar instantly swallows them up and the mishaps and adventures at Castle Capella quickly become fading memories. But as time will tell, a lot more excitement awaits these precocious and gifted kids in the not too distant future.
When the Emperor returns to Erebus he is more irascible than ever. His attempts at disrupting Proton’s inter-galactic commerce have failed to deliver the desired results. His attempts to pollute the water supply on Proton have been foiled at just about every turn. Now his ego has to deal with the humiliating defeat in kidnapping Queen Quasar. He is not an easy guy to live with under the best of circumstances, but now that victory has eluded him once again it’s impossible to placate him in any way. His tyrannical demeanor is getting worse with every passing day and the people around him are scared to death. In his present state of mind, he’s liable to do anything without seriously weighing the consequences. Adding to all of this frustration is his inability to figure out what went wrong at Castle Capella. He’s completely in the dark about the hologram and the part Pulsar and Chester played in preventing the kidnapping attempt.
Five weeks after the Pack is back at school, Headmaster Herby tells them that a field trip has been planned for them on the planet Croag in the Andromeda galaxy and they will be leaving in a week. This will be the first of many field trips designed to teach them how different atmospheres and planetary conditions will affect their powers. As the day draws near, the excitement mounts as the Pack is eager to start out on this new adventure. Gracie Galaxy is so excited she keeps blinking on and off like a stroboscope and Norman Nebula is so flipped out he can’t keep a single thought in his head for more than a few seconds. He keeps babbling like a baby.
The flight to Croag is long and uneventful and the Pack sleeps most of the way. Walking through the egress tunnel to the spaceport terminal, they’re still a little groggy and not fully awake. As soon as they’re inside the terminal though this all changes. The sights before them quickly bring them out of their haze as if a bucket of cold water has been thrown in their faces. They can’t believe their eyes.
This spaceport serves as a key hub for a lot of spaceships traveling from all over the known universe and there are a lot of weird creatures moving about. The bodies are of all colors, shapes and sizes. Some have small heads, some large and the number of eyes in these heads also varies. Some have ears, some don’t and the sounds coming from these creatures are amazing. The Pack assumes they are hearing a lot of different languages all being spoken at once. Some of these creatures are walking, some flying and some are even floating. The Pack is completely spellbound.
The spell is broken when a man who looks just like them walks over and introduces himself as their driver, Pointer. Pointer says, “I know what you’re going through right now. All of your senses are being overloaded and your brains are about to spin out of orbit. I reacted the same way when I first arrived from Proton. Don’t worry, your curiosity will take over and you’ll quickl
y adjust.”
Headmaster Herby asks, “What do the inhabitants of Croag look like?”
“No one really knows for sure.” Pointer replies. “They instantly metamorphose into the form of the majority of beings around them. If there isn’t a clear majority, they take on the form of the first being they see. They are omni-linguistic, extremely intelligent, jovial and peace loving by nature, but are fierce warriors if called upon to defend their planet. They like Queen Quasar and the Protonese very much and Croag is one of Proton’s staunchest allies.
Pointer leads them to a parking lot just outside the spaceport where a small bus-like vehicle awaits them. Once on board, the vehicle rises and slowly floats away. When they reach the main road, the vehicle accelerates to an astonishing speed, skimming along no more than six feet above the roadway. After about half an hour, the vehicle slows down and makes a sharp right into what looks like some sort of military camp. It pulls up in front of a large single story building with one wide door made of some solid material and no windows and settles down onto the roadway.
