by Jimmy Guieu
Kariven realized that things were not so rosy. His request was going to be rejected for sure. Nevertheless he tried to voice it. “Commander Taylor, in consideration of our friendship and in memory of our exploration of the past33, I’m asking you to authorize Streiler, Clark and me to take the space taxis for an hour.”
“Take the Space taxis… when the camp is in danger? You’re crazy, Kariven! And why do you want to leave the base?”
Kariven answered calmly with another question. “Sorry for insisting without giving you an explanation, Commander, but if we were buried under the shells of these monsters, sure to die, would our presence here save the base and the lives of our comrades?”
Taylor looked at them each in turn, puzzled, without really understanding the question. “I… Our fates are linked, you know that. I’m the head of this expedition and I have the right to know what you want to do outside the base in the space taxis.”
“Yes, Commander,” Kariven agreed. “You have the right to allow three of your men to try to save the crew. Time is of the essence, Commander. We can do it and when we get back we’ll explain the whys, wherefores and howabouts, whatever you want to know.”
The officer thought for a second, grumbled something incomprehensible, then decided, “OK, get out of here and go to hell! But be back in an hour!”
The three friends jumped into their space taxis, closed the hatches and took off at exactly the same time. Lieutenant Clark pressed the red button on the control panel in reach of his left hand and turned up the radio. These very simple maneuvers, however, were somewhat difficult for a pilot lying down on his belly in the rubber-lined “capsule” of the space taxi. To change position was a contortionist act!
“Clark here,” he announced. “We made it out but what are we doing in the Aristarchus crater?”
“So, you’re not curious to know what that light was, the purple beam that you were the only one to see when we were coming in? That phenomenon, the mysterious footprints and that huge glowing ball that left a crater beyond the libration line have got me thinking that we’re not alone here on the Moon! Anyway, we’ll soon find out. There, straight ahead, the Aristarchus crater.”
On the horizon stood a rocky mass, like a fence, smooth but cracked. Soon the outer walls of the lunar crater became clearer, presenting their serrated ridge against the black sky.
“The light beam!” Rudy Clark exploded excitedly.
Coming from a spot that was still invisible behind the top of the crater a weird purple ray was sweeping over the sky. It was searching space, wavered an instant, and then tilted in the direction of the three tiny rockets.
“It… It’s coming toward us!” Clark was alarmed, his forehead beading sweat. “Watch out! It’s going to touch us! Let’s get out of here!”
“Don’t panic,” Kariven ordered. “Stay behind me in triangular formation. Slow down, only 30 miles an hour. Follow my every move. I don’t think we’re in any danger since when Clark saw it the first time it didn’t do any harm to us.”
In fact the cone of purple light was surrounding the three machines but nothing happened.
“Oh, Good God,” Lieutenant Clark was stunned when he saw on his periscopic screen the image of the ground they were flying over.
In the Aristarchus crater a gigantic transparent dome rose up, reflecting the rays of the sun. Under the dome, over a mile wide and almost half a mile high on its axis, was a city, a strange city of geometric buildings covered in emerald green metal! At the intersections of the big, rectangular avenues were round gardens with beds of magnificent, multi-colored flowers. On the roofs of the buildings—serving as aero-garages here—spherical vehicles were lined up. The same kind of machines were flying through the air, some cruising slowly only three feet off the wide, uncongested, pink streets.
“Hey, boys, are you… Am I dreaming?” Clark stammered. “Are you seeing what I think I’m seeing, wide awake? God strike me down if I have the slightest idea what this could be!”
“It’s unbelievable,” Kariven was bewildered. “It looks to me like a base… a base like we Earthlings would build…”
“Look!” Clark cried out, “outside the dome, those disc-shaped machines lined up on the crater floor. They’re sitting on some kind of landing field made of three metal hemispheres…”
“Discs… Could they be what some people on Earth call flying saucers?”
The three space taxis circled over the fantastic city under the dome. All of a sudden in each of their minds a strange “audible thought” formed, a deep and sometimes warm “voice,” a clear and perfectly intelligible telepathic voice:
Welcome, Earthlings, to our lunar base!
“Who… who… who said that?” Clark mumbled uncomfortably.
You are flying over Woonka, our lunar base, the mysterious voice resumed, oddly echoing in the three stupefied astronauts’ minds. We took great interest in your preparations on Earth for the flight of your spaceships to your satellite and we are glad that for your civilization you have finally begun the Astronautical Age. Thus you come a little closer to our stage of evolution.
“But… who are you?” Streiler asked aloud, wondering if, by this question, he was not encouraging a visual and oral hallucination.
We come from Outer Space34. We are men like you, because we are morphologically identical to you, even though we possess various psychic senses that you are not familiar with. We come from a distant planet in a solar system around the star you call Polaris. We are, therefore, Polarians. Since time immemorial, thanks to our tremendous technical possibilities and scientific knowledge that is hard for you to imagine, we have watched your slow evolution, we have learned your languages and sometimes we have even made contact with a few carefully chosen Earthlings. Humans worthy of interest, both men and women, capable of rising above the petty political, religious and racial quarrels, humans with an open mind, ready to accept the help and teaching of the profound wisdom that they lack, humans who deep down inside and without being able to explain why feel like “strangers” on Earth or at least have seen too much of humanity to wallow in the mire of its mediocrity and its blindness. These few, selected human beings bear a mark on their hands, the Mark of Knowledge, though they know not the significance. They are the first of a new race, the race of the Fourth Cycle, similar to the Dragons of Wisdom of the ancient traditions, the remnants of your vanished civilizations. We Polarians are the descendants of these Dragons of Wisdom, the Instructors of primitive planets or those not yet completing their evolution.35
These special human beings will be of great help to us when we decide to contact the governments on Earth officially… and I’m pleased to tell you that you are included. You all, in fact, bear the Mark of Knowledge on your hands, which our panoptic vision showed us a long time ago. Thanks to you, it will be easier for us to form an Earth-Polarian alliance to confront the threat that looms over this solar system.
“What do you mean?” Streiler asked. “How can a series of planets be threatened except by a natural disaster that’s predictable like a solid-nucleus comet, giant meteors and such. And nothing like that seems to have been detected in outer space.”
It’s not about the end of the world, the telepathic voice continued, but a threat targeting the human race: the Denebians, green monsters with scaly, shiny skin, hideous creatures from the solar system of the star Deneb, are preparing to conquer Earth and the other planets of this system.
The revelation of this frightening danger plunged them into stupefied silence. They started nervously when the Man from Outer Space spoke again in their heads.
Now we have to get ready as fast as possible. I know all about the attack that your base is under. Anyway, you set up an excellent defense system and I praise the ingenuity of Earthlings in using their still rudimentary technology. But it’s absolutely necessary that you go help your brother Earthlings, the Russians, who are about to cave in under the massive stampede of giant Selenites.
“The R
ussians! They’ve reached the Moon too?” Kariven was very surprised.
Soon after you. They’re in a crater located about 90 miles to the west of the Kepler crater and your base. Go there immediately to free them with your Weasels. We could easily help them with our spaceships but we prefer that it be you Earthlings who save your planetary brothers from the clutches of death. The Russians are enemies of Americans only through absurd hegemonic doctrines and will one day become allies. You will be united in brotherhood. The other peoples of the Earth will follow this example and when all are united they will fight next to the Polarians against a real enemy incapable of the slightest humanitarian sentiment and unbelievably more dangerous than the Selenites: the Denebians, those green monsters from the distant star Deneb in the constellation Cygnus. The first alliance that you are going to make now with foreign astronauts in order to fight the Selenites, will, I hope, bind you two people for later. Go, friends, and may the Goddess Kosmos protect you!
The Polarian stopped his telepathic communication leaving the three Earthlings caught in a maze-like web of thoughts riddled with question marks.
Kariven was the first to get hold of himself. “We have to get back to base right away. Let’s split up. You two go directly to camp and tell the Commander to ready the Weasels. I’ll go to the Russian base and send orders after assessing the situation.”
“Great, my brothers!” Clark joked. “The Moon is jam-packed this season.”
Following the telepathic instructions given by the Polarian, Kariven steered his rocket west. He sped like lightning over the American base and soon after sent a kind of telegraphic message: “Kariven to Commander Taylor. All’s well. Streiler and Clark about to land. Do as they say without delay. Out.”
On the ground everyone had received the message. Each of them wondered why he was not landing and what these future orders could be.
After flying 85 miles to the west of the Kepler crater, Kariven slowed down to inspect the craters he was flying over. In his periscopic viewer he quickly spotted the crater with the Russians.
“Damn! The poor guys had a lot of problems landing. Their rocket is kaput.”
On the crater floor the weary survivors had just seen the small rocket that was circling at 600 feet. They could make out the inscription on its side: USSF36 with the white star of the American armed forces in front.
Colonel Zavkom and his comrades, with their claws on the torches spitting out the last jets of flame, wondered if they were not the victims of a collective hallucination. “A one-person rocket!” he roared.
“It has the white star of the American army,” Petrov noted.
The stunned Russians dared not make a move. They watched anxiously as the rocket slowly spiraled toward the ground.
“It’s looking for a spot to land that’s free of Selenites.” Petrov guessed. “Let’s clear off a space around 30 feet off to the side by pushing back the monsters.”
The seven men climbed on the pile of corpses and started driving the other hideous purple Selenites back with their torches. Under their boots they could feel the death throes of the lunar creatures.
“The pilot understands! He’s going to set down!”
Indeed, it had not taken Kariven long to see the Russians’ purpose. His space taxi set down gently on a pile of brown and violet corpses, creating a gaping wound or gash that exposed the deep metallic layers where the vital systems worked through endosmosis.
“Keep firing!” Zavkom ordered. “Come with me, Petrov.”
The two soviet astronauts approached the rocket whose hatch was starting to open. Petrov helped raise the armored door and stepped back slowly to rejoin his chief while Kariven squirmed out of the capsule. Standing before his rocket he looked around, saw the four corpses still in their torn spacesuits and walked toward the two men who had come to welcome him.
“Do you speak English?” he asked into his microphone, certain that the Russians were equipped with a spacesuit similar enough to his.
He heard two “Yes” in his earphones and he shook the claws that served as hands in the soviet spacesuits.
“Kariven, anthropaleontologist and doctor of the American Earth/Moon expedition.”
For the Russians, all hatred toward the American Capitalists had vanished. They were filled with an indefinable feeling, a feeling of curiosity, emotion and something like frustration, an inferiority complex maybe, stemming from their present situation. Nevertheless, it was with sincere joy that their claws shook the glove of the newcomer.
“Colonel Zavkom, chief of the Russian expedition,” the officer introduced himself. “This is the physicist and pilot of our spaceship, Petrov.”
“I wish we were meeting under better circumstances, my friends,” Kariven smiled.
Zavkom and Petrov looked at each other. How could a “western capitalist” call two soviet citizens “my friends”?
Kariven smiled at their astonishment. “Does it really surprise you that I call you friends?”
Colonel Zavkom cleared his throat before answering, “Your visit surprises me, in fact. Excuse me but usually Russians and Americans or Westerners in general don’t get along so well.”
Kariven shook his head. “I’m not a westerner. I’m an Earthling. In truth, if we accept this classification of nationalities, I’m not an American, I’m French. But in the Astronautical Age, being French, Russian or American doesn’t mean a thing. We’re all Earthlings, brothers of the same planet. Only the selfish minds of tyrannical leaders drunk on power and domination try to pit their peoples against each other. They tell you Russians all day long that in the west there are bigwigs of finance whose only goal is the oppression of the working class. Nothing is more false. There are obviously abuses, everywhere, but the way your leaders blacken us belongs only to the despots of warmongering people.”
Taken aback by this rant, Colonel Zavkom suggested, “Dr. Kariven, did you come here to give a lecture on moral rehabilitation and distract us from fighting against the Selenite monsters?”
Kariven smiled again. “No, Colonel Zavkom. It’s to tell you to hold out for an hour or two. I’m going to send a message to my chief who will bring two Weasels to your crater here and pull you out of this tight spot. Please excuse me…”
Kariven turned his transmitter to long wave and called the American base.
“Kariven to Commander Taylor… Kariven to Commander Taylor…”
“Commander Taylor here. Talk to me.”
“Streiler and Clark have landed?”
“Yes, they just told me your extraordinary adventure. If I didn’t know you three, I’d swear you were pulling my leg. But I don’t think so.”
“And you’re right,” Kariven said. “Waste no time in sending the two Weasels straight west toward the Marius crater. Just under 100 miles from our base, due west, you’ll find a crater about 1.5 miles in diameter where the Russians are holed up… at least what’s left of them. The poor guys have lost four of their men. The seven survivors are trying to contain the Selenites with a paltry reserve of fluoride. In an hour their torches will be useless.”
“OK, the Weasels are off immediately. Are you coming back?”
“No. I’ll stay with the Russians to ‘take up the gauntlet.’ In an hour I’ll send up a space flare so the Weasels can spot us more easily. Over and out.”
Turning to the Russians he said, “The Weasels are coming. At 110 miles an hour over bumpy terrain they’ll be here in around an hour. In the meantime give me one of those torches.”
Colonel Zavkom stared at him a while, then said, “You’re a funny man, Dr. Kariven. But you’re brave and I like brave men.”
The five Russian astronauts who fought on while their chief and Petrov were welcoming the American, had lost ground. They were backing up slowly. Kariven, between Zavkom and Petrov, aimed his torch at the monsters and turned the valve. The jet of purple flames bit deep into the violet shells and stopped them dead in their tracks, quivering on top of the other corpses.
While firing at the metallophage creatures Zavkom, Petrov and Kariven talked about their respective journeys and the adventures of setting up. That was how Kariven learned, in astonishment, that their “seleno-physical” experiment had caused a moonquake that quite accidentally destroyed the soviet spaceship.
“We knew,” Colonel Zavkom explained, “that the disaster was an accident. My friend Petrov was the first to come to your defense, arguing that you would certainly have performed experiments by propagating vibrations under the lunar crust. Personally I believed for a moment that you were attacking us. I even suggested awful threats of vengeance against you… and I regret that now after what you are doing for us.”
“Well, wouldn’t you do the same for us if the roles were reversed?”
“Undoubtedly,” the officer admitted, then after a pause he added, “I think your argument concerning people’s stupid behavior is correct… friend. Brotherly love is not, unfortunately, one of man’s dominant virtues.”
“I’m glad to hear you say that. It proves that you’re evolving. I myself evolved and truly learned to love my fellow man after a brief contact with Men from Outer Space. With them, I learned the magnitude of human stupidity, the bestial blindness that drives men to kill one another when it would be so simple, with a little goodwill, to live as one, happily, on the planet Earth… and even on other planets.”
Colonel Zavkom and Petrov looked at each other, not quite understanding.
“What do you mean by ‘Men from Outer Space’? Are you referring to your fellow astronauts?”
Kariven tried, not without difficulty in the face of the magnitude of the revelations, to summarize the extraordinary adventure that he and his friends had experienced. When he was finished, it was not surprise that he saw in the eyes of the others, but absolute astonishment.