by Jimmy Guieu
They ran off and got to a big avenue where a few cars were passing by. Zimko stood in the middle of the street and waved his arms over his head. He stopped a Zis 33 that looked like an expensive Packard. The brakes screeched and the big car came to a halt. A young blond was driving, her hair held up by an embroidered silk scarf. With pinched lips she held out her papers frigidly. Zimko made a sign to his friends and threw open the doors. He pushed the young lady aside and sat behind the wheel.
“Keep your papers, I don’t care about them,” he said, driving off.
The three explorers looked out the rear window to make sure that their “crime” had not attracted attention.
The young Russian sat gaping at them, staring at one after another in their MVD uniforms but who were acting in such a weird way. While driving Zimko probed the girl’s subconscious. After a minute he turned to her and smiled.
“Don’t be afraid, Doniatchka Petrovna. We don’t like the MVD any more than you do… even though we’re wearing the uniform.”
The girl looked at him in fear, then abruptly took something out of her bag. Before she could bring her closed hand to her mouth Zimko grabbed her fist and twisted it. She wailed and opened her hand. A white pill dropped onto her knee and rolled off onto the carpet.
“Cyanide, eh?” Zimko read her mind. “I don’t have time to explain to you but I guarantee you that you’re not under arrest. We needed your car, Doniatchka. It was just luck that brought you there at that moment, that’s all.”
The Polarian stopped the Zis just before an intersection and turned to smile at his friends. “Won’t she run off and sound the alarm?” Kariven whispered, who had, like his partners, not understood a word of their conversation.
“No. I forced her psychically to wait for us. The poor girl wanted to swallow cyanide, convinced that we belong to the MVD.”
“Is that motive enough to commit suicide?”
“Doniatchka’s brother recently slipped over into West Germany. So, she’s afraid that we heard about why he’s disappeared. In which case she would have to suffer the same fate as the relatives of anyone suspected of escaping…”
The Man from Outer Space whispered when they got to modern, eight-story building, “We’re here. Behind this door are two soldiers on watch. There are two more in the elevator and another two in the apartment.”
Kariven admired the eerie, superhuman abilities that allowed the Polarian to “see” through matter. Zimko concentrated and emitted a flood of mental waves that worked through hypnosis on the soldiers guarding the famous atomic physicist. Then he sent out a psychic order. The door opened. The sentry, like a robot, let them in and quietly closed the door behind them. They climbed up the stairs, careful not to make the steps creak, and on the landing passed between the two guards as still as their colleagues at the entrance. The door of the apartment opened soundlessly and closed behind the intruders. The Russian soldier went back to his place next to his frozen partner.
Stay here. I’ll go look for the professor, Zimko told his friends.
In total darkness he headed for a door and entered the room where the Soviet scientist was sleeping. He got around amazingly easily with his paroptic vision compensating for the lack of light. Kariven and his companions held their breath in the dark, under the spell of this weird abduction. Next to them, the regular breathing of the hypnotized guards echoed like snoring in the suffocating silence. A light touch drew their attention and made them shiver.
Open the door, Kariven heard in his head.
The explorer felt around for the doorknob. He stepped forward, bumped into one of the soldiers and jumped back. His heart was beating a thousand miles an hour. Losing his balance the Russian, stiff as a statue, toppled over onto the floor. The noise from his fall was absorbed by the deep-pile carpet. Kariven finally found the knob and opened the door. The faint light from the landing was almost blinding to all of them after the time spent in the dark.
Professor Serge Yegov walked out, staring ahead, unconscious of his guides. Around 50 years old he wore a black suit and dark brown overcoat. He had no tie; his shirt collar was open and his shoes untied. Zimko had to act fast and not worry about the minor details of his clothes.
As they walked downstairs the Polarian worked on Professor Yegov’s mind, making him stop. “The Denebians are coming,” he whispered to the explorers. “Wait here for me!”
He rushed back up the stairs, ran into the apartment and opened the window looking out on the street. Zimko plucked out what looked like a flashlight from his pocket and pressed a button, holding it out over the car. The door that was opening froze.
The Polarian slipped the device back into his pocket and left. Back with his friends he said, “Quickly! I paralyzed them for 15 minutes.”
The hurried down the stairs guiding the professor.
“Take him to the girl’s car and don’t hesitate to shoot anyone from the MVD if they bother you. I’ll meet you there in a minute.”
Zimko turned around and cast another dose of hypnotic waves at the sentinels guarding the building. The five Russians, still standing, drooped their heads to sleep for the next eight hours. Then he went to the Moskvitch. On his mental order a Denebian seemed to regain consciousness and got out of the car. Guided by Zimko the green creature walked next to him all the way to the Zis.
“We’re taking this Denebian with us, my friends,” he said, opening the rear door.
Kariven, Dormoy and Angelvin shuddered at the sight of the monster whose red eyes, striped with yellow, shined brightly in the night. His glistening body gave off a sharp odor. Dormoy sat in the folding seat to the right, Angelvin on the left, leaving the back seat to Kariven, Professor Yegov and the Denebian. Even though unconscious the creature from Deneb still scared the explorers. Angelvin, sitting across from the monster, shrank down and folded his legs under the seat.
Zimko planted himself in front of the Moskvitch and pulled out his disintegrator cone. In the blinding flash the car and its passengers disappeared forever. Back in the Zis he started the car and drove off with a sigh of relief. The trickiest part of their mission was accomplished. Once again, while heading back to Ismailov Park, he probed the girl’s mind, which would soon hold no more secrets from him.
Doniatchka Petrovna, a doctor at the Lenin Clinic, was 27 years old. She was living in fear of the day that they would find out that her brother (an engineer) had escaped into West Berlin two weeks ago. Her distress at the sight of the MVD uniforms was quite understandable.
The Zis finally covered the last 100 yards to the park. Its passengers got out in front of a small door in the monumental gate and hurriedly followed Zimko, who was the only one to “see” the flying saucer protected by its invisibility shield.
“Why did you spare this Denebian and above all what are we going to do with this Russian?”
“I’ll explain everything in a minute, Kariven.”
Angelvin swore loudly and rubbed his forehead.
“Sorry, pal!” Zimko smiled. “Our ship may be invisible, but it’s still very solid. That wasn’t empty air you just bumped into, Robert, but the front of the flying saucer.”
The ethnographer massaged his forehead and sneered, swearing again as he marched up the plank into the belly of the ship.
On seeing him come in, Jenny threw herself into his arms. “Oh, Robert, I was so worried,” she muttered, closing her eyes in relief and rubbing her cheek against his. When she opened her eyes she yelped in fear and jumped back. The Denebian was standing motionless in the middle of the cabin. Its weird uniform hid little of its shiny green, scaly skin. Its red and yellow, expressionless eyes stared straight ahead.
“Don’t worry, Jenny, he’s hypnotized.”
The French girl watched him with the same apprehension. Fighting against these monsters at the Guyancourt airport in the night was one thing but seeing one two feet away another thing entirely! Staying rational, she looked away from the hideous creature and turned curiously to Profe
ssor Yegov and the young Russian lady with ash blond hair. She squinted scornfully at Doniatchka’s tight-fitting dress, certainly up-to-date in Russia but appalling in the eyes of a French woman, a Parisian to boot.
Yuln was about to press the button for takeoff when her brother stopped her. “Not yet, Yuln. This young lady is not on our program. If she doesn’t want to go with us I have no right to keep her. Since she’s no celebrity on the Soviet scene, she’s different than the professor. I’ll question her in English because she speaks it pretty well. The library at her clinic—I saw in her mind—has a number of medical and surgical volumes in English. She’s studied them all in detail. For now we should change our clothes,” he proposed to the explorers. “After that we can deal with her.”
He sent a mental order to the Denebian who crept off and shut himself in Yuln’s cabin. When they come back, having traded the MVD uniforms for their usual clothes, the Polarian awoke Doniatchka. The young, blond Russian fluttered her eyelids, turned her head to the right and left, and paid more attention to the room—completely foreign to her—than to the people around her. The circular cabin made of blue metal, lighted mysteriously, with its chrome, half-moon command post, its huge, convex screen, its windows and the two girls wearing such strange clothes… or wearing so little, was all this real or was she dreaming?
Still without saying a word, she looked at Professor Yegov, thought for a minute, then remembered having seen his photo in Pravda. What in the world was the greatest Russian atomic physicist doing in her dream? As for the two young beauties in see-through tunics, she recognized them. She had often seen heroines like them in the novels of Yefremov, Belyaev and Bulgakov34. It was all very simple: she was subconsciously reliving one of those unlikely adventures she had read about in a science fiction novel. Scraps of memory and some astonishingly precise details were decorating her dream…
“No, Doniatchka,” Zimko set her straight, capturing her train of thought. “You’re not dreaming. This really is Professor Yegov sitting here and these two young ladies are not heroines out of a science fiction novel. You’re on board a ship that we’ll discuss later, in Russian, but that you know about from the American and English radio you often listen to. I’m referring to flying saucers.”
Doniatchka, confused, noticed that these men were no longer wearing the MVD uniforms. If she was not dreaming, the man who was talking had lost his mind.
“Don’t be stupid!” she exploded. “Where have you taken me and what do you plan to do with me?”
Yuln walked up and put her hand on the girl’s shoulder. “My brother isn’t joking Doniatchka. You really are inside a spaceship that the Earthlings call a flying saucer. These green tunics that Jenny and I, Yuln, are wearing are the common outfit on the planet that my brother and I come from. But this is an irrelevant detail. You’re free, Doniatchka, free to leave. We’re not holding you here,” and she pointed to the hatch. “However, answer me very honestly and rest assured that we don’t belong to the MVD: Do you want to leave Russia? And if so do you want to join your brother in West Berlin?”
Doniatchka had slowly lowered her head. Now her face was buried in hands and she was weeping. “My God! Please, don’t let this be a dream!”
Zimko made a sign to his sister. Yuln nodded, went back to the command post and pressed a button. Without the passengers feeling a thing the flying saucer shot straight up into the sky. With a sharp turn to the right it headed west at 1,200 miles an hour.
With Jenny’s help, Dormoy tried to calm down the young Russian. Crying with joy, she still hesitated to accept the truth.
When Professor Yegov regained consciousness, the first thing he noticed was the strange outfits of Yuln and Jenny. He could not believe his eyes and let them drop down to the seat he was in. Were these gorgeous beauties nymphs or fairies?
Zimko hurried up to enlighten him and started to explain in detail to him and his blond compatriot the why and wherefore of their presence on board the flying disc. The scientist and young doctor, mouths open, all ears, could not believe the adventure they were on.
“You don’t like the war, Professor Yegov,” Zimko concluded, “any more than the western scientists working like you on atomic weapons. However, on government’s orders they have to be produced and you do it. But when will Earthlings be less stupid and join together instead of hating each other? The Earth is threatened! Humanity is facing the greatest danger that it’s ever faced. And men are there, in the East on one side and in the West on the other, shaking their fists before slugging each other! It’s crazy!”
“The capitalist countries…” the Russian scientist began.
Zimko waved off the objection. “Let go of these ridiculous slogans designed to indoctrinate the blind and dumb masses! Are you waiting, you Men of Earth, for millions of Denebians to strike your planet and enslave your race before you finally realize the dreadful danger that’s looming over you people?”
Shaken up by this impassioned diatribe Professor Yegov spoke clumsily and without conviction. “Oh! Oh, but there’s no immediate danger. You’re going to…”
“And this?” the Polarian shouted, psychically ordering the Denebian to come out of his hiding place.
Dormoy jumped over and sat next to Doniatchka. “You’re going to be scared, very scared, but what you’ll see is under the control of Zimko’s powerful mental faculties. Try not to be afraid.”
Impressed by his words she looked where he did. The door in the blue metal wall slowly opened. The green monster stepped out like a snake-skinned parody of man! Doniatchka screamed and fell against Dormoy. Trembling convulsively she buried her face in the geophysicist’s chest.
Professor Yegov jumped up and stumbled back, his legs wobbling before the terrifying Denebian who was walking toward him.
“And this, Professor?” Zimko repeated, pointing to the green monster who was now standing still in the middle of the cabin. “Is this proof enough? These horrid creatures are already among the Earthlings… and we were a hair’s breadth away from falling into their clutches tonight. In fact,” almost as an aside, “it’s this prisoner of ours who will tell you why the Denebians wanted to kidnap you. We’re lucky that you all understand English otherwise our communication would get pretty complicated.”
Turning to the pseudo-human from Deneb, he spoke in English, “Why did you want to kidnap Professor Yegov?”
In a weird, throaty voice the frightful creature answered, “We decided to imitate your tactic, to kidnap scientists and make them serve as witnesses for us later. We treat them with a psychic annihilator and imprint their brains with a film of artificial memories showing life—as Earthlings need to imagine it—on your planets.”
“What kind of memories, for example?”
“We insist on our pacifism and our desire to help humans against the Polarian aggressors.”
“Ah, because you show them that we are the aggressors?” the Polarian emphasized.
“Yes,” the blank-eyed monster replied. “17 renowned scientists and 53 specialists in all branches have been captured recently and submitted constantly to this treatment.”
“So, where are these Earthlings?”
“Yesterday they were still at our astrobase beyond Pluto’s orbit. But while waiting, we decided to bring them to our mobile base stationed in Australia for the moment.”
“While waiting for what?” the Polarian shouted at these monsters’ audacity.
“The order to unleash psychological warfare on Earth.”
CHAPTER SIX
Alarmed, the Man from Outer Space demanded details, but to no avail. And searching the Denebian prisoner’s brain he found nothing to refute what he had said.
“I don’t know exactly what the psychological warfare consists of. I don’t know when, how or where it will break out.”
“Where in Australia is your base? What role does it play in your plan for domination?”
“Our base is temporarily NNW of the Wyola Lakes in the Great Victoria
Desert.”
While pursuing his interrogation, Zimko, thanks to his surprising psychic abilities, mentally ordered his sister, “Head for southern Australia and tell me when we’re flying over No Man’s Land.”
“Our base,” the green creature went on, “contains a commando unit of 500 Denebian secret agents. They’ve infiltrated every country on this planet. Working in groups of at least three, they bring the captured scientists back to the base and receive new orders.”
“How long have you been operating on Earth?”
“Since the Earth year 1945, basically. Because our attention to this civilization was attracted by the first atomic explosions. Before that we had nothing to do with this solar system.”
“It was your first nuclear experiments that also caused us to come to your planet,” the Polarian explained to his Earthling friends. “In fact, we’re afraid that by manipulating the forces whose power you’re still not aware of, you’ll cause a disaster, a cataclysm not only fatal to your own world but that could seriously disrupt the orbit of other planets in the solar system.”
Zimko put the Denebian in a chair.
“In what countries have you accomplished your missions and what were they about?”
In his hoarse voice the green monster answered calmly, unemotionally because under Zimko’s control, “We’ve operated in the USA, in South America, in Europe and in Asia. Now we’re starting to prospect Australia. Our permanent mission is to track down and, as far as possible, eliminate the Polarians. We are also kidnapping scientists and taking stock of the economic and industrial potential of this planet.”
“Have you eliminated any Polarians?” Zimko asked, trembling with anger.
“Many, yes. Some were killed. Those we were able to capture killed themselves when we want to interrogate them. Our technicians were forced to create a device to paralyze the bio-electric energy of the Polarians in order to keep them alive until they talked.”
The Polarian figured it would be good to enlighten his friends a little: “In a huge release of psychic power, we can gather all our electrostatic energy in our brain. We become, then, a lost cause and short-circuit our cerebral neurons, making our brains explode. Death, of course, is instantaneous. Those of us who fall into Denebian hands do this to avoid betraying our brothers. These monsters’ interrogation is useless against us. We’re impregnable to hypnosis. You can paralyze us, make us suffer horrible pain by psycho-probes or psychic detectors, but a lengthy incursion into our subconscious is something not possible. If these cursed creatures discover a process to destroy our mental abilities, it would only increase the danger to humans. Our enemies, therefore, have to capture a lot of Polarians and interrogate them on the progress of our operations.”