by Jimmy Guieu
Zimko’s words, sent through his tiny belly transmitter, echoed loudly in the loudspeakers that had emerged from the cockpits of the six spaceships at the start of his speech.
“Earth friends,” the Man from Outer Space continued, “at this very moment in Washington DC, New York, Peking, Sydney, Tokyo, Moscow, Rome, London, Berlin and all the big cities on the planet, similar contact is being made between the representatives of our race and yours. For years we have had many friends on your planet, members of a secret, peaceful organization—the Earth-Polarian Alliance—whose cars were just now announcing our arrival. The three Earthlings at my side, Jean Kariven, Michel Dormoy and Robert Angelvin, along with their wives, are the veterans of this Alliance. One day soon peace will finally be established between the peoples of Earth, your race and ours will form a union… against an enemy from outer space. For, a threat is looming over your civilization. But that, too, will be revealed in the message tonight. This is not, therefore, the time to panic but rather to take appropriate measures.”
With these enigmatic words the enthusiasm running through the crowd died down. There were worried eyes now staring at the beings speaking of peace… by preparing for war. But what kind of war? Certainly not a conflict between east and west since the Man from Outer Space said that Earthlings would soon be united. What should they understand by “enemies from outer space”? Could it be that an interplanetary war was about to take place?
“I repeat, Earth friends, don’t give in to panic. We Polarians, with all the means of offense and defense at our disposal, are ready to protect you… if any attack is made on your planet. Stay calm and trust in our desire to help you and henceforth you will benefit from our knowledge.”
Zimko sent out a psychic call to the occupants of the five other Fimn’has and from each of them came out the axial platform holding two Centaurians and two Wolfians, creatures from three to four feet tall, wearing either metallic or rubber spacesuits. The transparent part of their round helmet showed their faces, similar to humans but orange for the Centaurians and brown fur with huge vertical eyes for the Wolfians.
At the sight of these 20 little beings that were so different from the Men from Outer Space—but closer to the idea formed of “Martians”—a reflex to fall back struck the thousands of curious bystanders around the Place de la Concorde. Some in the front looked like they were about to run away.
Zimko raised his hand and his voice, “You have nothing to fear! These beings are our allies and therefore your friends. The smaller ones in the jointed metal spacesuits come from the solar system Alpha Centauri. The others, a little taller, come from the system Wolf 359. They also speak French and other Earth languages. We have known your languages for a long time.
“Take a close look at these Wolfians and Centaurians and don’t think of them as monsters or freaks. They are intelligent beings, kind and wise, whose civilizations are as evolved as ours.
“Take a close look and etch deep in your minds their faces and bodies and spacesuits. For, these two races and our own are the only ones that will come as friends to your planet. We also have allies of different types but they won’t come here. Our three races are the only peaceful races that operate in your solar system. Remember this. And if by chance you witness the landing of a squadron of flying saucers whose occupants are different from Wolfians, Centaurians and us, run away and immediately alert the police or the nearest authority. Because they would be extra-terrestrials who are not part of our Space Commandos and therefore enemies!”
All over the world they snatched up the newspapers to devour the reports on the arrival of the cosmic visitors to our planet. Radio and television had been reporting all night long, giving commentaries and showing the different phases of contact made in all the big cities on Earth. People wanted to see new pictures of these pseudo-men and their weird, dwarf companions. One special edition after another sold out. Crowds even camped in front of the big dailies’ printers hoping to get the latest scoop. Police and security services were stationed around the editorial offices, radio stations and TV studios to keep back the impatient crowds.
In the morning, fanatics even showed up at the various ministries—without knowing which could really satisfy their desires—to demand that they be among the first to depart for Mars. For, in spite of all the explanations in the media, some people stubbornly continued in their belief that the flying saucers were Martian.
The astronomical observatories were overwhelmed. They were assaulted with constant telephone calls. Some people wanted to know where the planet Kodha was, the home of the Polarians, how long its orbit around the Pole Star was, and why the Pole Star was a sun, etc. To the evasive answer given by the astronomers to the first two questions the questioners got angry. They could not understand that they telescopes could not spot a planet whose existence we did not know about before its inhabitants came to visit.
Moreover, the good people kept making fun of the famous astronomer Sosthene Cornu who, on the night before the memorable day, had given a speech on the radio in which he railed against “the human stupidity of the feeble-minded who believed that so-called flying saucers came from outer space”! Facts had just given him a well-deserved slap in the face by shattering his ridiculous anthropocentrism of a narrow-minded scientist.
Fluorescent discs with an emerald green halo, 15 spaceships carrying on board the Heads of State of the powerful nations on Earth sped into starry space to converge on their space base orbiting 600 miles around the planet.
A huge sphere of metal, over a mile and a half in diameter, the base looked frozen in space, an extraordinary globe hanging in the cosmic void on a background of bright stars that did not twinkle. On its equatorial part a rectangular hatch opened, 165 feet high by 650 feet wide, revealing a vast, brightly lit hold in which the discs entered five at a time. The hatch closed up behind them and when the artificial air had been reestablished the axial platforms came out of the ships with their occupants standing on the chrome metal striped with thin grooves.
Zimko, along with Kariven, Dormoy and Angelvin, led the representatives of the Earth nations—still dazed by this voyage that was unthinkable only 48 hours ago—through the corridors and walkways of the “equatorial section”. A group of tubular elevators took them to drop them off in another corridor with electro-luminescent walls. At the end of this they went through an armored door and entered an enormous amphitheater with a concave ceiling giving off a soft, bluish light.
Seats in soft metal that felt both spongy and rigid were set up in a semi-circle. Before each of these was a movable, rectangular tray with a notebook of blank plastex pages, different colored pens and a small device with a screen. Above the screen was a sign with the name of the Earth nation whose representative would occupy that seat.
“This half-circle is a little reminiscent of the United Nations,” the President of the French Republic whispered to his neighbor.
Of course, he was astonished to hear in his mind, but here the discussions will not be fruitless.
The President nodded and smiled at Zimko. These thoughts projected into his head must certainly have come from him.
For the first time in history all the Heads of State had willingly agreed to hold a truly “general” assembly, which pleased them greatly. This unanimous decision had met no resistance and no veto had delayed it.
The kind face of the American President betrayed a brief, amused surprise on seeing the seat next to him occupied by President Koulski, Chief of the Supreme Soviet.
Zimko sat behind a kind of long desk cluttered with strange instruments. Suspended above a big, convex screen a fluorescent spiral emitted red pulses on the chrome control panel coated in isolex before him.
At his side sat the veterans of the Earth-Polarian Alliance: Kariven, Dormoy and Angelvin. To his right, however, the seat remained empty.
In front of the desk-control panel the superior officers, Wolfian and Centaurian, sat down—in chairs designed for their size—in th
eir spacesuits. They were the general staff of the Space Commandos.
Honky came in and sat to the right of Zimko who then raised his hand and addressed the assembly in English. His words were automatically translated electronically on each of the devices for the different Heads of State. These devices—psychic buzzers—sent the translation directly into the minds of the participants so that they did not need to wear headphones that become tiresome during a long speech.
“Gentlemen,” the Chief of the Space Commandos began, “for the first time in your race the powerful politicians have finally come together not to backbite and criticize but to build the foundation for lasting peace. Before giving the floor to my old friend Nheg Honky, Chief of the Information Service of the Federated Worlds, I would like to give you a brief history of our civilization. This might allow you to understand why we are, in some way, your… Ancestors from the Future…
CHAPTER V
This unexpected paradox—Ancestors from the Future—came as a great surprise to the high dignitaries assembled under the huge dome of the Polarian astro-base. So it was with lively interest that they listened to Zimko’s talk.
“In a very distant past, around 500 million years ago, our race had already reached an extraordinary level of evolution. The age of interplanetary travel, now surpassed, gave way to interstellar travel thanks to the discovery of one of the most distinguished scientists of our planet. The crowning achievement of decades of research, this scientist perfected a space-time disruptor that permitted our spaceships to enter subspace, a strange field where Time has no duration and Space no extension. Consequently, our spaceships could move from one solar system to another at absolute speed. In essence, after taking off and flying for a certain distance following traditional methods, the spaceship dropped its standard mode of propulsion to replace it with the space-time disruptor, which we still use. The ship could then leave normal space and jump at absolute speed into subspace, which, in a fraction of a second, brought it to the frontiers of the target solar system. There it cut the space-time disruptor and went back to traditional technology based on electromagnetic fields.
“Our ancestors started inventorying the many solar systems of their galactic zone and meticulously exploring them, one by one, planet by planet. This took time, millennia in fact, but it allowed us to locate the planets that were physically similar to Kodha, our home. Then we established Polarian colonies on these planets. One of them was a star in your system: Mars, which, being older than Earth, had already reached its vital stage hundreds of millions of years before. Mars supported pretty evolved flora and fauna in an atmosphere not unlike Earth’s, but the latter was still in a stage of geological upheaval.
“A Polarian colony, therefore, was set up on Mars and over the ages developed an important Martian civilization. Later, at four different epochs, we sent Polarian colonist to your planet. It was these colonists who successively founded the first terrestrial civilizations long ago disappeared: Gondwana, Mu, Lemuria and Atlantis.11 Swallowed up one by one by disasters these civilizations only left a handful of Polarians—or ‘humans’—who soon degenerated into a prehistoric stage.
“After each cosmic cataclysm the disrupted solar system was flooded with electromagnetic energy—a by-product of cosmic rays—blocking our spaceships from coming back to the affected planets. From this fact, powerless to help our poor brothers, we watched on our screens as the civilizations they built decayed and died. Nature is made in such a way that it destroys everything it creates. When the cosmic rays eased up—sometimes taking millennia—new space squadrons headed back to the worlds with a mission to rebuild the civilization destroyed by disaster.
“We were able, thereafter, to spot the preliminary signs of certain cataclysms but not all. The most usual—the arrival in a solar system of a foreign body—was easy. And this was how we warned our ancestors on Mars 300,000 years ago. A giant comet with a solid core blazing across the solar system caused them to abandon Mars and emigrate to Earth where, tens of thousands of years earlier, a civilization had been completely destroyed. Before the problem star, the comet Yahoun, reached Mars, they went to Earth and founded… Atlantis.12 In its turn, almost 15,000 years ago, Atlantis was swallowed up, leaving only a small number of survivors who no resources. They dispersed over the various continents of the globe where they led miserable lives. Some of them fell back into almost barbaric states; others, obviously luckier, notably in Egypt, built new a civilization that your archeologists consider highly evolved whereas, in fact, it was only the bones of decadent culture.
“Only one branch from Atlantis kept a semblance of its former splendor because they were hidden in a temperate valley of Antarctic ice.13
“You Earthlings, therefore, white and red, are descended from Martians and ultimately of Polarian origin since our brothers had founded the colony on Mars. Black and yellow Earthlings are a mix between Polarians and the natives of Venus where our ancestors also established a colony.
“Basically, Earthlings are not originally from Earth but from the planet Kodha in the solar system of the Pole Star, the cradle of our ancient civilization, the oldest and most evolved in the Galaxy. We Polarians are, therefore, your ancestors.
“But since your civilization, after Atlantis, has not yet reached a high level of evolution, we consider it in its infancy. Our civilization, compared to yours, is practically… in the Future. That’s why I used that strange paradox by calling us your Ancestors from the Future.
“To wrap up this history, as sketchy as it was, you should keep one fundamental truth in mind: we Polarians bring to the Earthlings a love whose profound sincerity they have no inkling of. Our most cherished desire is to help you, to guide you to Knowledge, Wisdom and Goodness because not only are humans are brothers but we all come from the same race, the Polarian race that is now going to take them under its protective wing like an older brother wrapping his strong arms around a younger, still clumsy brother being harassed by an enemy.
“Excuse me for this long but not pointless digression. Now I give the floor to my good friend and brother in arms, Nheg Honky, Chief of the I.S. of the Federated Worlds, who will tell you the goals and motives of our coming to your planet.”
At the thunderous applause Zimko smiled, glad to see telepathically the unanimous surge of enthusiasm and sympathy among his listeners and even some affection toward his own people.
For the Wolfians and Centaurians, wearing their spacesuits, it was a little harder to feel the emotional current pulsing like an aura, invisible to human eyes, around most of the Heads of State. In their great wisdom they were not offended in seeing some of the VIPs, although attracted by the Polarians, feeling a vague, instinctive repulsion toward them. Earthlings, in fact, considered these little creatures a little like “monsters”, maybe freaks, very different from homo sapiens, and though they were not hostile they also did not show the same interest that they did to their (physically) kin of the Polarian race.
Equality and mutual understanding between different thinking races of the Galaxy had never been something accepted in a day. It would be the same with these Earthlings among the Wolfians and Centaurians. But the latter knew that with time their races would end up being considered “natural” in the same way as Polarians.
Honky, with his big build, as big as Zimko, put his hands flat on the control panel and addressed the assembly:
“Gentlemen, you who represent the Earth nations, as Zimko just said our race is spread all over the Galaxy, continually landing on new planets where it peacefully establishes bases out of kindness, wisdom and altruism. These base are there to help the under-developed natives. One day during our space voyages we Polarians explored the solar system of stars that you call Deneb in the constellation Cygnus and Procyon in the constellation Canis Minor. These two solar systems, to the surprise of the Polarian explorers, were inhabited by two evolved races that had also reached the stage of interstellar travel. Denebians and Procyonians categorically refused our o
ffers of alliance and cultural exchange and forbid us to come back to their planets. Wanting above all not to bother the evolved races capable of progressing on their own, we decided not to return. However, we expressed our good intentions by assuring them that we would answer any call from them if they decided one day to establish cordial and neutral relations between our races.
“A few decades passed and we landed on a planet in the solar system of Canopus that we had already visited several times and whose natives, a rather primitive creature that looked like an upright frog, kept shy but friendly relations with us. Imagine our surprise in finding that their capital, consisting of round mud or brick cabins, was reduced to heaps of burned rubble.
“The terrorized survivors, whom we had great trouble finding as they were hiding in their swamps, explained to us the cause of the disaster: a few days earlier the Denebians landed on their planet with ten spaceships that looked like ours because they were disc-shaped. The Canopians approached, curious and trustful, believing they’d see Polarians who often enough came to help them and gradually teach them basic knowledge accessible to their minds.
“On seeing these different creatures—we’ll show you what they look like very soon—they ran away, very disturbed. The Denebians abruptly paralyzed them, then made them take them to their lakeside city. Their goal was to colonize the planet and enslave the rightful inhabitants. Although unable to measure up to their powerful, invulnerable invaders, the natives refused to give in. They fought heroically, but in vain, with their primitive weapons—a kind of spring loaded weapon that shot big, poisoned thorns.
“The thermal cannon from a single Denebian spaceship only had to fire its blazing ray twice to reduce the Canopian capital to cinders, along with its 25,000 inhabitants. The few survivors who told us their misfortune said they would prefer to commit collective suicide rather than submit to these monsters. They begged us to protect them and fight back the cruel creatures who didn’t hesitate to wipe out a population of 25,000 Canopians using their thermal weapons against… poisoned arrows!
